Cook Inlet facilities withstand quake

The early hours of the morning of Sunday Jan. 24 saw one of the largest earthquakes experienced in Alaska’s Cook Inlet region. But while the violent trembler, with a strength of 7.1, on the west side of the inlet resulted in some property damage on the Kenai Peninsula and spilled merchandise displays in some Anchorage stores, oil and gas production facilities in and around Cook Inlet survived unscathed.

Lori Nelson, spokeswoman for Hilcorp Alaska, told Petroleum News that there had been no injuries and no damage to Hilcorp facilities in the Kenai Peninsula and Cook Inlet areas as a result of the earthquake.

“We immediately initiated outside inspections of our facilities in the area and did an aerial inspection as early as possible on Sunday morning of all pipelines and facilities,” Nelson said. “The earthquake did trigger some precautionary alarms offshore which were deemed all clear. Swanson River operations were without power temporarily, only resulting in minor process upsets.”

Nelson said that there were also temporary outages of some gas compressors, but that Hilcorp was able to continue to meet the demands of local utilities without supply interruptions.

ConocoPhillips spokeswoman Amy Burnett told Petroleum News that there had been no damage to ConocoPhillips’ Cook Inlet facilities, no significant impacts to the company’s Anchorage office complex, and no impact to operations.

- ALAN BAILEY