Photos: ConocoPhillips cracks open giant petroleum reserve, with good results

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Central Production Facility 2 power plant at Kuparuk oil field on Alaska's North Slope, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016.

With oil exploration effectively dead in the U.S. Arctic Ocean and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska's hope of recharging its oil pipeline depends greatly on one last swath of federal land.

There, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, ConocoPhillips is enjoying better-than-expected success with a small field that recently began producing the reserve's first commercial oil.

CD5, as it's called, is a stepping stone to larger prospects the company wants to develop in the NPR-A, an Indiana-sized sweep of tundra on the western edge of the giant North Slope fields.

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