ConocoPhillips boosts Willow work, exploration and lease holdings on North Slope

ConocoPhillips used its first-quarter 2026 earnings call April 30 to send a clear message to the North Slope: Willow is still pulling in crews, steel, gravel and spending. The company said winter construction at Willow had reached about 50% completion, all four planned Alaska winter exploration wells were finished and under evaluation, and it had secured high-priority acreage in the latest National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale.

For borough leaders, contractors and nearby communities, those are more than corporate milestones. They point to continued work around Prudhoe Bay and westward into the NPR-A, where air support, marine logistics, camps, gravel, hauling and maintenance contracts can ripple through local businesses and jobs. ConocoPhillips is not just holding the property. It is still moving multiple workstreams at once.

Willow remains the center of that plan. ConocoPhillips says the project is on track for first oil in early 2029 and has lifted its total project capital estimate to between $8.5 billion and $9.0 billion. The company’s Willow fact sheet places the project in the northeastern NPR-A, with a gravel footprint of about 385 acres. It says construction could support as many as 2,500 jobs and 300 permanent jobs once the field is running. In its 2025 work summary, ConocoPhillips said more than 2,400 jobs were filled, two bridges were built, 72 miles of pipeline were installed and year-round camp occupancy began.

The exploration program matters for a different reason: appraisal wells decide whether a prospect becomes the next phase of development. ConocoPhillips said the four-well winter program was completed successfully and that evaluation is now underway. Alaska Public Media reported earlier in the year that the program had faced a rig accident on the North Slope, but the company’s latest update suggests the winter season still produced the data it wanted. The company also said it secured acreage in the March 18 NPR-A lease sale, where the Bureau of Land Management drew $163,696,722.20 in high bids across 187 tracts out of 625 offered.

That leasing interest is important because the NPR-A remains a vast future supply base, with more than 22 million acres of surface estate and about 650,000 acres of subsurface mineral rights. Alaska’s areawide leasing program, which runs between the Canning River and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the east and the Colville River and NPR-A on the west, is designed to keep that pipeline of land available for future oil work.

The stakes are political and local as well as economic. Alaska Public Media reported that environmental and Native organizations sued over federal approval of ConocoPhillips’ winter exploration program in January, and another report linked a Nuiqsut subsistence-rights dispute to new oversight around Teshekpuk Lake. The North Slope Borough also issued a joint statement with ConocoPhillips Alaska after a Doyon rig incident in January, underscoring how closely the borough and the company remain tied on safety and emergency response. With Willow still advancing and summer mobilization underway, ConocoPhillips’ next 12 to 18 months could shape both contractor workloads and the region’s production outlook well before the first barrel arrives in 2029.