Pumping Up the Volume with New Slope Production

“The KRU continues to thrive with satellite projects like Nuna,” ConocoPhillips Alaska Vice President of Alaska Asset Development Heather Tash says. “Since 2000, ConocoPhillips has drilled more than fifty-eight exploration wells across the entirety of our North Slope operations, highlighting the significant oil exploration and development opportunities that remain on Alaska’s North Slope, including in our established areas of development. The Nuna project is notable as the first new drill site in the Greater Kuparuk Area in nearly a decade.”

Working Up Willow

While 20,000 additional barrels per day in TAPS is nothing to sneeze at, there’s a larger prize on the horizon. ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is estimated to nearly double the company’s current production rates, with an estimate of 180,000 barrels per day at its peak. The project is said to be the largest in size and scope to be built on the North Slope in two decades. ConocoPhillips Alaska is on track to have oil flowing in 2029.

The Willow project has been years in the making. ConocoPhillips Alaska acquired its first leases there, in the northeast portion of the Bear Tooth Unit, in 1999. It was nearly twenty years before the permitting process began in 2018, during which ConocoPhillips Alaska drilled several successful exploration wells. The path from permitting to a final investment decision took five additional years, during which the project ultimately overcame numerous attempts in federal court to stop it. Construction commenced when US District Judge Sharon Gleason issued a pivotal decision in April 2023 allowing the project to proceed. However, appeals and legal arguments continued in court.

On June 13, 2025, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision keeping Willow permits in effect. While the three-judge panel found a procedural error that the US Bureau of Land Management must address, Willow construction is allowed to continue.

Winter 2024–2025 was the peak construction season for the Willow project, says ConocoPhillips Alaska Vice President of Willow Mo Chahal. The company installed nearly 80 miles of pipeline, executed pipeline installations under a key waterway, built two bridges, hauled and placed gravel, and more.

“We ramped up to roughly 2,400 people on the North Slope in support of the project and are happy to report that we met all our critical winter season milestones, and the project remains on track for first oil in 2029,” Chahal says.

One critical milestone achieved this season, he notes, is that twelve oil field modules built in Corpus Christi, Texas, were transported to Alaska by sealift last summer and, during the winter season, were hauled on gravel and ice roads from Kuparuk to Willow. They are all now in place on the pad.

That’s not the only critical accomplishment this year, Chahal says.

“We opened our Willow construction camp, and that’s important because it allows us to begin construction work on the North Slope throughout the year, as opposed to being completely confined to the winter season. This is the first year we will have year-round construction,” he says.

In addition to building out the oil field infrastructure, ConocoPhillips Alaska will also build a permanent camp to house workers at the Willow project, large enough to support around 500 employees.

Pikka Progress

Closer to the horizon than Willow—both in terms of anticipated first oil and distance from Prudhoe Bay—is Pikka. Australian oil and gas company Santos is closing in on first oil for its Pikka Phase 1 project, which is expected to deliver 80,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak.

Pikka, also being billed as a “largest-in-twenty-years” development for the North Slope, is located in the Nanushuk oil formation on state leases. Pikka, Iñupiat for “up there,” is a low carbon-intensity operation that Santos says will have net-zero scope 1 and 2 emissions from first production.

Santos jointly owns the project with Spanish energy company Repsol, in a 51 percent to 49 percent arrangement. What was expected to be three seasons of construction, conducted by nearly 2,500 workers, was materially finished in two seasons. The company in May celebrated the completion of 120 miles of new pipeline—a remarkable achievement in two winter seasons—by slicing into a 120-foot-long sandwich in its Anchorage office.

Santos President for Alaska Bruce Dingeman told the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference audience on June 3 that the company is anticipating it will tap the resource ahead of earlier estimates of second quarter 2026.

“It has been quite the journey for us to get to this point. When Repsol and Armstrong Energy drilled the discovery well in 2013, that was over twelve years ago, and now we’re within twelve months of first oil. So it’s been a long journey, but we’re close to something really transformative,” Dingeman said.

In an announcement in March, Dingeman said the company had reached the 80 percent completion mark for the Pikka project, “putting us in a good position to pursue acceleration to first oil around the end of 2025.”

Adding oil to TAPS isn’t the only benefit from Pikka. Dingeman told the conference audience, “In the construction of the project over the last two and a half years, we’ve delivered thousands of jobs—both permanent and temporary roles. We’ve made a new investment in downtown Anchorage in our office building, and we’ve helped, I think, the overall economy of Alaska advance during our construction phase. But the real value will come when production is realized.”

Santos officials note that Pikka isn’t the only project the company is working on. Immediately southeast of Pikka, Santos is pressing forward on promising developments in the Horseshoe and Quokka units. Infrastructure built for Pikka could be leveraged to develop these units, they note, which have potential to add tens of thousands of additional barrels down TAPS.

Squeezing Out Every Drop

ConocoPhillips Alaska’s production represents about 41 percent of the current flow in TAPS, at 195,000 barrels per day. Santos is not yet adding to the pipeline flow. Where is the other 60 percent coming from? From Hilcorp, Alaska’s largest oil field operator and one of the largest privately owned oil and gas producers in the United States.

Hilcorp, whose first foray into the state was in tapped-out Cook Inlet in 2011, expanded its operations to the North Slope by buying BP’s shares of the Endicott and Northstar fields, and a portion of the company’s shares of Milne Point and yet-untapped Liberty field in 2014. In 2020, Hilcorp bought everything BP still owned as the company departed Alaska. In so doing, Hilcorp became the primary operator of Prudhoe Bay.

Hilcorp brought its Cook Inlet strategy of using technology to wring oil and gas out of depleted fields into play on the North Slope. This year, Hilcorp announced it has tripled production from the Milne Point unit, where 2014 production was 18,400 barrels per day. In January 2025, Hilcorp said it reached more than 50,000 barrels per day at the field and hopes to reach 60,000 barrels per day in the next four to five years.

Part of the success at Milne Point has to do with a polymer-flood process that Hilcorp embarked on, in partnership with UAF petroleum engineering researchers, in 2018. According to an October 2022 article in the Journal of Petroleum Technology, a publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the project involved injecting a mix of polymer and seawater into the heavy-oil reservoir through two existing injection wells. Previous attempts to use only a waterflood method resulted in about 20 percent oil recovery; the polymer flood resulted in up to 39 percent recovery.

Hilcorp in November 2024 became the largest offshore producer in Alaska when regulators approved its purchase of Italian energy company Eni SpA. The $1 billion deal meant Hilcorp is now owner of Eni’s Oooguruk and Nikaitchuq fields, which produce about 20,000 barrels of oil per day. Add that to Hilcorp’s existing net production average of about 135,000 barrels of oil per day.

Hilcorp officials say they are seeing steady increases in production at Prudhoe Bay and Milne Point. Overall on the North Slope, the company says Hilcorp-operated fields saw a 5 percent year-over-year increase in production.

Josu Jon Imaz, CEO of Spanish energy company Repsol—the 49 percent owner of the Pikka project—told Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference attendees he is thrilled to be part of the force driving a shift in the state’s oil and gas future.

“The decline you have experienced over the last years, I think that that is going to change. We are going to see a real reverse—a turning point—in coming months, and Pikka going to be part of this history. And for us, I think, being party to this change is very exciting, and is important,” Imaz said.