www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8124325
com Highlights Oil field's falling production reflects US trend Technology postpones inevitable at Prudhoe Bay Image: Oil workers Melina Mara / The Washington Post Walter Williams, left, and Gary Stevens work at the BP Prudhoe Bay oil fi eld facility in Alaska's Northslope. By Justin Blum The Washington Post Updated: 1:14 am ET June 7, 2005 PRUDHOE BAY, Alaska - Oil keeps flowing through a maze of aging wells, pu mps and pipelines that poke through the snow on this desolate North Slop e tundra.
Click Here But this vast field is ailing: Output has fallen by nearly 75 percent fro m its peak in 1987 and is expected to continue dropping. The Prudhoe Bay field sprawling over an area the size of Howard County st ill pumps more oil than any other site in the United States. But its shr inking production reflects a trend throughout the country: After years o f pumping, fields in the US are drawing less oil from the ground. At a time when Pres ident Bush and members of Congress are talking about the need to be less dependent on foreign oil, the country is becoming even more dependent.
More business news While there are some bright spots in US oil production, such as discove ries in the Gulf of Mexico, the overall outlook points steadily downward and is expected to continue that way for the foreseeable future -- the result of a natural process of decline.
winding down the way it is ," said Vincent Leonard, a BP manager who has worked here since the late 1970s, when production began. "They told us years ago, 'Eventually you' re going to hit this point where things are declining,' and they are." Oil companies like BP are trying to extend the life of US fields by usi ng a variety of new technologies to wring more oil from the ground. But the technology and increased Gulf production are not enough to reverse t he declines. Nationally, daily production of oil and natural gas liquids dropped last year to an average of 72 million barrels a day -- a 36 percent decrease since peaking in 1970. At Prudhoe Bay, average daily production last ye ar was about 450,000 barrels a day, a 72 percent drop from its peak. Growing demand With demand increasing domestically and abroad -- particularly in China a nd India -- supplies are being pushed to their limit, sending crude oil prices to record highs. The world has gradually lost spare pumping capac ity that used to serve as an emergency reserve that could be opened as n eeded to moderate prices. In turn, gasoline prices have hit record highs, and remain well above $2 a gallon nationally. In this isolated part of Alaska, pumping oil has been a challenge ever si nce production started in 1977. Temperatures can drop past 30 degrees be low zero and workers wear heavy blue parkas with animal fur lining their hoods. Employees have to be flown into the nearby Deadhorse airport and remain here for days or weeks at a time, living in dormitories or cramp ed hotels, because there's no city within an easy drive. Now the issue confronting oil company executives here is how to slow the declines in Prudhoe Bay and nearby fields set on a treeless landscape at the edge of the Beaufort Sea. On a recent day, in a Prudhoe Bay site known as Z Pad, BP contractors wer e trying to tap into pockets of oil that were not previously accessible. In a control room inside an oil rig, a worker sat behind a video monito r clutching a joystick that guided coiled metal tubing through an existi ng pipe, out the side and into the earth.
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