Anchorage Daily News

Anadarko Petroleum is done with the Jacob's Ladder unit, a North Slope prospect whose unique geology led the company to hope it could contain hundreds of barrels of oil equivalent.

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The Texas company and its partners returned to the state 16 of their 18 leases in the site some 10 miles southeast of the Prudhoe Bay field.

Jacob's Ladder was a significant investment for Anadarko. According to filings with the state, the company spent more than $30 million drilling a well there over two winters.

Anadarko picked up the leases at Jacob's Ladder over three lease sales during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The company eventually brought BG Group and Arctic Slope Regional Corp. on board as minority partners before starting a drilling program.

Anadarko began drilling a well in early 2007 and finished it last winter. But last May the company said it found "no commercial hydrocarbons."

Anadarko is currently focusing its exploration efforts on a far-reaching and multiyear search for natural gas in the Brooks Range foothills. The company plans to complete three exploration wells on Native and federal land this winter.

Oil companies first ventured to the area that became Jacob's Ladder in the years just after the oil discovery at Prudhoe Bay in 1968. Mobil, Shell and Texaco separately drilled between 1969 and 1970, but none of those wells led to significant discoveries.

Interest in Jacob's Ladder began to renew as some geologists believed the prospect contained a type of terrain where water erodes shallow limestone deposits to form underground caves that can become good vessels for holding oil or gas.

The state in 2005 put estimates of a prospect at 20 million to 660 million barrels of oil equivalent, while estimating that a separate prospect in the region could hold 50 million to 800 million barrels.

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