Continual communication and precise control enabled a record-setting thin bed lateral well to be drilled in Alaska - more are planned. When it came time to develop the Kuparuk-C sand lying about 7,100 ft (2,164 m) deep in the Nanuq/Kuparuk Pool in the south part of the Colville River field on Alaska's North Slope, ConocoPhillips's engineers and geologists were in agreement. Data from two offset wells about 6,000 ft (1,829 m) apart had mapped the target as a homogeneous Cretaceous reservoir sandwiched between two shales, the Kalubik (above) and the Miluveach (below). Part of an anticline structure, the sand was about 10 ft (3 m) thick and sloped gently upward from the proposed landing site to a major boundary fault about 6,600 ft (2,012 m) away. The sand is of excellent quality with 300 mD to 400 mD permeability. Drilling the 6,000 ft horizontal lateral well, which was to be the first of a three-well development, in a sand package that was below seismic resolution with limited penetrations was going to be a challenge. But based on this limited data, a non-complex geologic structure was created and simple well plan approved based on this geologic interpretation (Figure 1).
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