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Narwhal Exploration seeks state approval to drill up to three wells in West Harrison Bay
Narwhal Exploration has asked the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas to approve up to three exploratory oil wells this winter in West Harrison Bay, in Beaufort Sea waters about 40 miles northwest of Nuiqsut. The division is taking written comment through Oct. 30.
The wells would be drilled from temporary ice pads built up to rest on the seafloor, according to the division's notice. The pads would sit in water up to about 8 feet deep, according to the company's 2025 application for a federal marine mammal authorization.
Camps and equipment would be staged onshore in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Crews would reach the area by a sea-ice trail along the coast from Oliktok Point and by an ice airstrip in the reserve.
Narwhal expects to start building camps in November, finish the ice pads by mid-December, drill the first well in January and begin packing up around mid-May.
The company had planned to drill between January and April 2026, according to the spill plan it filed with the state Department of Environmental Conservation last year. A revised plan filed in May moved that window to January through April 2027 and covers up to five wells. The plan is built around a planning standard of 5,500 barrels a day for 15 days, a spill volume the company must show it could respond to, not a forecast.
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About Nuiqsut
Nuiqsut (also spelled Nuiqsat) is an Iñupiaq village in the North Slope Borough, near the Colville River delta. The Colville is its lifeline, the route its fuel, fish and travel depend on, and floods on the river threaten that link.
The village is surrounded by expanding oil development, including the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the Alpine field and the Willow project. Its stories return to permits and federal rules for drilling pads, gravel mines and exploration wells in the area, and to how that growing footprint affects subsistence hunting.
Nuiqsut's city government and tribe weigh in on projects such as Willow, and federal reviews of the petroleum reserve assess the effects of development on its hunting grounds and those of other North Slope villages. North Slope Borough programs fund village needs such as leveling homes.