This Month in 1986.. Final tow to Prudhoe

Biggest sealift ever marks turning point for Alaska oil, reports ADN in 1986

Patti Epler

Daily News Business Reporter

Prudhoe Bay — On July 31, more than two dozen heavily laden barges dropped anchor off Oliktok Point on the North Slope.This year’s summer sealift carried more than a billion dollars of cargo to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk River and Lisburne. Up to 1,500 workers will help unload the barges and install the giant modules that house production facilities. Heralded as a milestone in the history of North Slope oil development, the 1986 sealift is the largest ever.

But the sealift is a milestone for another reason, too. It marks the passing of Alaska oil development into another era. Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America and economic lifeblood of Alaska, will begin to wind down next year when production peaks. The days of fever-pitch construction really are over, Prudhoe Bay has grown up.

The barges brought just about everything Prudhoe Bay, Lisburne and Kuparuk need to continue pumping oil for the lives of the fields. That includes modules that contain facilities to handle the natural gas, produced with the oil, that must be returned to the ground. Other modules hold main production centers for Kuparuk and Lusburne, facilities that process the oil when it comes to the surface.

ARCO Alaska Inc., an operator of the three fields, plans no more sealifts. The company and its partners already have spent well over $15 billion on Prudhoe Bay alone to get the supergaint field to this stage. Any other equipment likely will be smaller than that which arrived this year and probably will be trucked in, officials said.

“In that sense, it’s like the end of a melodrama,” said Harold Heinze, president of ARCO Alaska Inc. “It is a maturing of the oil fields on the North Slope.”

The sealift isn’t quite the last hurrah for Alaska oil development.

Next year, according to Standard Alaska Production Co. officials, a large sealift will carry production facilities to the company’s Endicott field. Those facilities will be even bigger than those brought up by ARCO this summer, they say.

But Endicott is offshore, the first production field in the Alaska Beaufort Sea and perhaps a new beginning for arctic oil development as companies continue to explore the icy waters of the Beaufort, Bering and Chukchi seas. Several other offshore finds have been announced, but plans to bring the reservoirs into production are delayed by depressed oil prices.

Not the end

“But it may take us several years to translate those ideas into projects.”

Heinze said the oil companies are completing the North Slope facilities “at a very difficult time in our industry.”

The money spent on some sealift facilities — like those for Lisburne æ might not have been spent had the companies foreseen the dramatic drop in oil prices. But the projects were planned years ago, the construction of facilities contracted and under way when the bottom fell out early this year. Part of the much publicized streamlining of oil companies was to get the cash flow to fund the sealift, Heinze said.

Still, this year’s sealift seemed subdued, a feeling that was magnified by the gray rain and fog that accompanied last week’s unloading of barges. One by one, crawler-transports positioned under the modules slowly carried the giant structures to foundations already set in place throughout the fields. Some modules weigh 2,800 tons and stand more than 10 stories high. At one-third of a mile per hour, it takes a transport about 30 hours to reach its destination.

Three dozen of the modules will fit together in a towering structure called the Central Gas Facility. Half the facility will inject natural gas into the Prudhoe Bay field to enhance oil recovery; the other half will extract natural gas liquids form the field and add them to crude oil flowing through the trans-Alaska pipeline.

Another huge plant will be a production center at the Lisburne field, which is expected to be turned on by early next year.

A third set of modules will be assembled into a production facility 30 miles west of Prudhoe Bay at the Kuparuk River field, the nation’s second-largest oil field.

When everything is in place, the oil fields will account for one in every five barrels of oil produced in the United States.

The North Slope has hosted a sealift every year sine 1968. Early on, the barges hauled pipe and construction materials. In 1975, the barges got stuck in the ice about a mile from the dock then in use. So the dock was extended out to meet the barges and now is the permanent berth for sealift barges.

For the past five years, Jack Purl has coordinated the sealift for ARCO. A 20-year Navy veteran who served as a submarine engineering officer, Purl likens the sealift with its convoy of tugs and barges to the amphibious invasions of islands during World War II.

From his offices in Pasadena, Purl and a staff of 20 spend the bulk of the year planning the sealift. It begins with working with the module designers to make sure the transports and modules are compatible. Trucks and trailers must be lined up to move the modules and other equipment around. The loading of the barges is planned precisely to accomplish offloading with the least amount of wasted time.

“We have to come 3,000 miles and wind up being a 16th of an inch of where we want to be,” Purl said. The modules are made to a tolerance of a 16th of an inch so sections can be welded together with little trouble on site.

The apparent lack of frenetic activity during the unloading is by design, Purl said. Precise planning means everyone knows where he is supposed to be and what he is supposed to be doing so the chances of accident are lessened.

“I make it my personal effort to ensure a smooth, well-managed effort,” he said, “so I’m paying careful attention to the personal safety of the equipment.”

A successful sealift is a function of everybody and everything being in the right place at the right time, Purl said. More than 400 people are under Purl’s planning purview, including maritime workers on the barges and crews to unload the modules and transport them into place.

In late spring, Purl and his staff travel to the sites where modules are being constructed. This year, that meant trips to 11 sites in the Pacific Northwest and Far East.

Ice forecasting is an integral part of the planning process, he said. The convoy can’t get into the Slope until the ice pack has melted around the shoreward edges and been blown far enough offshore by the summer winds.

This year, it took the barges 16 days to sail from Seattle to the Slope.

Once in port, each barge is brought to berth and unloaded in a certain order, each transport brought forward on a specific schedule. Purl brings with him 30 to 40 large highway-type vans full of spare parts and tools so there is no delay if a repair is needed.

“The whole effort gets easier every year,” he said. “This has been one of the most interesting jobs I’ve ever had.”

But it’s the last year for Purl as well as ARCO’s sealift. He said he’ll go on to another assignment within the company, a change he’s not altogether against because, he said, sealifts tend to burn a person out.

—Anchorage Daily News Aug. 10, 1986

Editor’s Note: While the story was not published until Aug. 10, the barges arrived in Prudhoe Bay on July 31.