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Alaska changes NPR-A road design, moves route to the east Year-round road would extend drilling season; bridge design undecided Larry Persily Petroleum News Juneau Correspondent
State planners say the new proposed route for a year-round gravel road linking the untapped National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska with the existing North Slope road system is a little longer than the original plan but much better for several reasons.
“The trade-off was easy for us,” says Mike McKinnon of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.
The administration sees all-season road access as key to promoting more oil and gas exploration and production on the slope.
“The department, working with industry and working with the North Slope Borough over the last year, has refined this route so that it accesses leases most efficiently and avoids impacts to Nuiqsut and the nearby river systems as much as possible,” said McKinnon, the lead planner on the state’s industrial roads program.
The proposed route would start 357 miles north of Fairbanks, at a new junction with the North Slope Haul Road (Dalton Highway), then head west before turning north toward the village of Nuiqsut. The earlier plan had the road running more directly through the Itkillik River drainage system, McKinnon said, which provided good terrain but also presented a conflict with residents’ traditional hunting and fishing use of the area. New route has several benefits “We needed to get out of the area, so we moved east,” he said. The new route for the 40-mile-long, north-south portion of the road is less than 10 miles east of the original plan but, McKinnon said, it has more benefits than just getting out of the subsistence area:
It puts the route right on top of several good sand and gravel sites, helping to reduce construction costs.
It runs along a terrace, some 300- to 400-feet in elevation, allowing the wind to help clear the highway of snow, and hopefully holding down snowplowing costs.
And it would provide better access to leases in the foothills area and the basin south of the Tarn and Meltwater fields.
The state expects to submit its wetlands development application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers within three to six months, McKinnon said, with about the same timetable for completing right-of-way work on state lands. In a perfect world, he said, the Army Corps’ environmental review and permitting would take two years, during which time the state would be working on project design. Construction could start in 2006 That would set the start of construction for 2006, with the road and bridges to take three years to complete.
Total construction and design costs are estimated at $350 million to $400 million.
ConocoPhillips, which has been exploring in northeast NPR-A since the federal lease sale in 1999, is supportive of the project and believes it could help promote future exploration and development, said spokeswoman Dawn Patience.
The company holds leases on 500,000 acres in NPR-A, she said, and is working with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on an environmental impact statement for development of Alpine satellite fields within NPR-A. The 100,000-barrel-a-day Alpine field is just east of NPR-A.
Although a lot of questions remain about the road project — including financing, public access and what type of bridge to build over the Colville River — a cost-benefits study completed in September by consultants CH2M Hill shows the project could produce combined savings for the oil and gas industry, and tax and royalty revenues for the state, far in excess of its construction costs. Colville bridge design undecided One of the larger questions — as measured in steel and concrete — is what kind of bridge to build over the Colville. The state is looking at two options for the 3,200-foot-long bridge, McKinnon said.
One would be a cable-stay design, similar to what most people call a suspension bridge. Its twin towers would stand 240 feet tall, with the longest road span measuring 1,100 feet. Though it would have several support piers, just two of the concrete structures would sit in the most active zone of the river.
The other option is a lower-profile, concrete-and-steel bridge, with the longest span measuring 400 feet. This design would put more supports in the river’s most active zone.
In addition to cost and weight-bearing capacity for heavy oil field equipment, designers will need to consider the issue of heavy ice moving down the river, pushing against bridge supports, McKinnon said. Warm weather helped survey crews Unusually warm fall weather was a big plus for the project this year, he said, allowing an extended field season for wetlands, history and archaeology surveys. “We used that time to do materials site investigations along the entire route.”
The road would be 32 feet wide, with five feet of gravel for a base. Though gravel sources can be a problem on some projects, McKinnon said field work has proven “we have enough sites that can accommodate it.”
It’s ironic in a way that the warm weather that has shortened the season for temporary ice roads on the slope — which, in part, has accelerated the need for year-round access to the area — has been such a help to field workers this year.
Whereas the ice road season across the frozen tundra lasted more than 200 days 30 years ago, it shrunk to 103 days in 2002, according to the Department of Transportation. The CH2M Hill consultants estimated year-round access to NPR-A could allow the completion of one additional exploration or delineation well per year for each rig in the area.
Road would extend drilling season “During a 20-year period, the effect of drilling two wells per year for each rig has a dramatic effect on the pace at which discovery and development occurs,” the report said.
Under current conditions, explorers have just a couple of months to work after getting across an ice bridge on the Colville River before they need to dismantle their drilling rig and get back across the water.
Although planners have amended the route for the road, there is no change in plans to end the gravel road at the Colville bridge just south of Nuiqsut. The roadway would land on Native corporation property just across the river, thus avoiding the federal lease prohibition against connecting any gravel roads in NPR-A to the North Slope road system.
Companies would build winter ice roads from the end of the bridge, McKinnon said.
Nuiqsut, a community of 450 residents just north of the bridge site, sees year-round road access as a significant benefit to lower freight and fuel costs in the area, while also providing all-season access to the jet-aircraft airport at Deadhorse. Residents, however, are concerned that open access to the road could create conflicts over fish and wildlife resources, McKinnon said. State to discuss access with residents State officials will be working over the winter with North Slope Borough and Nuiqsut residents to answer their concerns, he said.
An open road is also a concern for the oil industry and federal security officials worried about unregulated access to oil and gas wells and pipe. Those concerns may require closing the road with a gate and a security staffer at the turn-off from the Dalton Highway, McKinnon said.
Although construction cost estimates are preliminary, the bridge is projected at around $120 million. The state plans to drill more holes at the proposed Colville River crossing this winter to find the best sites for setting bridge foundations, McKinnon said. Cost of the 102-mile road, plus smaller bridges over the Toolik and Kuparuk rivers, is estimated at $200 million. Contingencies and changes could push those costs higher.
The Department of Transportation believes it has sufficient funding — about $5 million in state money — to cover the cost of route survey, road and bridge design and the federal environmental review, McKinnon said.
State planners knew in February 2002 the road was a real opportunity, he said. “In June 2002 we really set our teeth into it.”
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