Bowhead Transport Co. is celebrating its 30th year of providing marine transportation services in the Alaska-Washington corridor and preparing for new opportunities in construction, oil exploration and infrastructure development in the remote Arctic.
The Alaska Native-owned company is based in Seattle, though its business is focused thousands of miles to the north where it serves many of Alaska’s arctic communities. Bowhead coordinates and carries out an annual sealift of freight to Alaska’s North Slope and is the only provider of regularly scheduled barge services to and between the communities of Barrow, Point Hope, Point Lay, Wainwright, Nuiqsut, Prudhoe Bay and Kaktovik.
During the brief open-water season in the Arctic, the company also carries out a yearly backhaul of goods to the Puget Sound and beyond.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the creation of the North Slope Borough provided the impetus for the formation of Bowhead in 1982 by Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corp. (UIC), the Alaska Native village corporation for Barrow. The transportation company was created in response to a need for scheduled commercial village freight services in Alaska’s Far North.
In a typical year, Bowhead can expect to haul 6,000 to 10,000 short tons of freight northbound and another 5,000 tons southbound. The company transports construction materials, heavy equipment and general cargo throughout the waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
“In a big year, we move 18,000-plus tons of freight,” said Bowhead General Manager Jim Dwight in a recent interview.
Bowhead barges lateral freight between the villages and calls at other locations on the Arctic Coast to meet the needs of government agency, military and oil and gas industry clients.
Service and growth
In 2012 Bowhead’s parent , UIC, formed the UIC Marine Services division, a holding company for several subsidiaries including Bowhead Transport that provide marine transportation and other support services in the Lower 48 and on the North Slope to both commercial and government entities. These include remote-site barge service to Arctic coastal villages; operation of company-owned specialized vessels for shallow draft lighterage work, providing crew members and customized vessels for research, training and maintenance for federal clients.
Bowhead’s 2011 voyage north was precision-loaded and departed Seattle on schedule to make its North Slope deliveries during the open-water season between July and October.
The company provides special shareholder services including reduced rates and offers door-to-door freight service to the homes and businesses of its customers in all of the North Slope villages it serves.
“It might not seem like much, but actually, it is a great service for our customers to have their freight shipments consolidated in Seattle, and delivered to their door,” Dwight said.
Bowhead also won a contract in 2011 with Carlile Transportation to provide some of the marine transportation and logistics support for the North Slope Borough Barrow Gas Field Expansion Project. The services included lightering the Kuukpik 5 drilling rig, along with pipe, and mud from the line haul barge at Barrow, and lightering more than 50,000 square feet of project equipment and components between Oliktok Point and Barrow within the project’s critical weather window.
Other 2011 highlights included a proposed plan for the backhaul and recycling of scrap metal in Barrow, as well as providing transportation services to Northland for contaminated dirt from the former Northeast Cape Air Force Station at Saint Lawrence Island for disposal in the Lower 48.
In addition to its regularly scheduled barge service to the Arctic, Bowhead made stops at Cape Lisburne; Tin City, located at the mouth of Cape Creek on the Bering Sea coast; and Nome to backhaul materials under contract.
Supporting new, ongoing projects
Bowhead marked its 30th year this spring by moving into a new building, the West Seattle Corporate Center located at 4025 Delridge Way in Seattle, which is near the Port of Seattle just west of the Spokane Street Bridge.
The company is also paving the way for new growth related to a resurgence of oil exploration activity on the North Slope.
“We likely will add additional 8(a) and commercial companies to the division portfolio,” said Dwight. “And we are looking to add additional vessels over the next few years.”
Bowhead currently owns a small fleet of lighterage vessels, and charters oceangoing vessels as needed.
Dwight said a substantial amount of the investment the company plans in new vessels is related to the new oil exploration and production activity.
This year Bowhead won the contract to move the drill rig from Barrow back to Prudhoe Bay. The company also will barge equipment and materials for a $40 million airport relocation project underway in Kaktovik and final freight required to complete construction of the $85 million multiyear Barrow Replacement Hospital project.
The existing Kaktovik airport is situated on a gravel spit exposed to water on three sides northeast of Barter Island between the Okpilak and Jago rivers on the Beaufort Sea and is periodically submerged by Arctic storms. A new flood-resistant facility is being built in the center of Barter Island at a site located above the 100-year elevation that is consistent with the Federal Aviation Administration’s mission and design standards. The project includes a new 4,500-foot-by-100-foot runway, taxiway, apron, access road, and airport lighting system. A new access road, landfill and sewage lagoon also will be constructed and the existing landfill and sewage lagoon will be closed and the land used for the apron area. The construction is planned in two phases: the first to begin in fiscal 2012 and the second in fiscal 2013.
Designed by RIM Architects of Anchorage, the 100,000-square-foot hospital in Barrow is the largest and most significant construction project in the Arctic community in the past 30 years. A joint venture partnership of UIC Construction and ASRC SKW Eskimos Inc. is managing the project. Underway since August 2010, the construction is scheduled for completion January 2013.
Bowhead will transport equipment and supplies to, and from, several U.S. Air Force remediation sites this year and next to support contractors removing contaminated materials for disposal outside of Alaska, Dwight said.
Making a difference
As an Alaska Native owned company, Bowhead makes a difference every day in North Slope communities by providing job opportunities and job training for UIC shareholders. Through UIC Shareholder Services, Bowhead also participates as one of 40 different profit centers in providing training and apprenticeships for the region’s young people.
Bowhead also provides underwriting support for Alaska Public Radio and in-kind freight services for other nonprofit organizations that benefit UIC shareholders across the North Slope.
