Lynden gets it done for North Slope customer

Petroleum News

Lynden International said July 20 that its Anchorage crew has coordinated many charters, but rarely do they involve one of the world’s largest commercial cargo aircraft, the Antonov 124. “When one of our customers ‘rings the bell’ and needs an 82,000-pound,60-foot-long, 11-foot-high mud pump house for their North Slope exploration project, guys like Jeff Pennell, regional operations manager with Lynden International, answer the call,” said Senior Account Executive Nick Karnos.

In his 32 years at Lynden, Pennell says there have only been a handful of times he had to hire an aircraft this big to haul freight. “It’s no big deal to make this type of move happen,” he said modestly. “This is no different than any of the other charters we set up, the freight and the airplane are just a little ger.”

But, in fact, the move was a big deal. The customer was losing almost a million dollars a day waiting for the emergency freight with a crew and drill rig standing by. It required finding the specialized aircraft, coordinating the movement of freight from the shipper in Houston to the airport, loading equipment on the ground, ground handling and the subsequent movement from Fairbanks to Alaska’s North Slope. Pennell relied on the expertise of Steve Willford, project manager with Alaska West Express in Fairbanks for specialty equipment and handling. Once the freight arrived in Fairbanks, it was unloaded, trans-loaded to a separate trailer, then sent 400 more miles to Deadhorse. From Deadhorse, it went over an ice road to an island in the Arctic Ocean where crews were waitin