Oct. 15 decision, oil tax initiative
Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer will decide Oct. 15 whether a proposed citizen ballot initiative to raise taxes on oil and gas can go forward to the signature-gathering stage. Tens of thousands of signatures will be needed for the proposal to make it to the 2020 election ballot. The tax increases would be very damaging to the industry, companies say, dampen- ing efforts to develop new discoveries.

BP confident, Hilcorp at Prudhoe
BP senior managers, speaking on background, say they are confident Hilcorp Energy will be able to revitalize the Prudhoe Bay field, which BP is selling to Hilcorp. The comments were based on Hilcorp’s track record at Milne Point, a field adjacent to Prudhoe where Hilcorp is 50 percent owner and field operator. Hilcorp’s Milne Point production plan for 2020 is about double what BP would have produced had it remained operator. That’s because Hilcorp moved ahead on new Milne Point projects like “Moose Pad” and a heavy oil polymer injection project BP had done earlier work on but did not move forward. One factor is that Hilcorp has been able to do projects for about half the cost that BP, a large company, would have incurred.

The polymer injection, now functioning at two pads at Milne, also shows Hilcorp can carry off high-tech oilfield projects. There have been concerns that Hilcorp, a smaller company, will be challenged in operating Prudhoe, which is the largest field in North America and one of the most complex in its operations.

Petroleum employment rose 3.8 percent in August, or 500 jobs, to a total of 9,900 employed, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said. The data is still preliminary.

Koch bros. rep to the AOGCC?
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has appointed Jeremy Price, the former Alaska director of the conservative Koch brothers’ political group Prosperity for Alaska, to be the public member on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Price has been serving as Deputy Chief of Staff in the governor’s office. The AOGCC has three commissioners, one required to be a petroleum engineer, one a geologist and the third a public member. The AOGCC commissioner jobs pay fairly well and the public member slot has sometimes been a dumping ground for political people a governor wants to reward. Tuckerman Babcock and Sarah Palin served on the Commission in this way. Alternatively, the move may be Chief of Staff Ben Stevens’ way of getting Price out of the governor’s office. Price is the last of the conservative trio (including Babcock and Donna Arduin) that came in with Dunleavy when he took office last December. The three pushed hard-core strategies that created a huge ruckus with the Legislature and public last spring.

ConocoPhillips: New drilling record
ConocoPhillips has set two more Extended-Reach Drilling records on the North Slope. Both were set at well CD5-98, a multilateral well, in July. First was a North America record of 47,828 feet set for combined footage, or the footage of the vertical well and two horizontal laterals, or producing legs. The second was an Alaska record of 32,468 feet for a single well, also at CD5-98, including the vertical well and one horizontal well. The drilling was at the CD5 production pad that is a short distance west of the Alpine field. Doyon Drilling Rig 25 drilled CD5-98.

Doyon Drilling’s new Rig 26, a heavy rig capable of drilling even longer horizontal wells, is en route to the slope and will be operating next year.