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MIX module sails for North Slope Project will add 20,000 barrels per day, 50 million barrels cumulative Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
The owners and builders of the largest oil field production module ever assembled in Alaska celebrated July 19 as a barge carrying the module was towed away from Anderson Dock in Anchorage headed for final seaworthiness tests — and then for the North Slope.
State Rep. Ramona Barnes, R-Anchorage, who christened the module, offered a toast:
“To the Prudhoe Bay owner companies that invested $160 million in this project and worked to make this project Alaska built; to VECO Construction and the other 35 companies that hired Alaskans and showed the oil industry that we can do it right and do it …. here at home. And finally, to the 215 Alaska workers and their families in Anchorage and Fairbanks and on the North Slope — thank you for helping make this happen.”
Glasses (of sparkling cider) were lifted “to the birth of Alaska’s newest industry — large-scale module fabrication in Alaska.”
ARCO Alaska Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Patience told PNA Aug. 4 that they had started to unload the MIX module that morning. The modules for Alpine had also arrived at the North Slope, she said, and would be unloaded within the next week to 10 days.
$80 million module ARCO Alaska Inc., BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., Exxon Company USA and the other Prudhoe Bay unit owners invested $80 million in the 2,700-ton compressor module, nearly nine stories high and more than 150 feet in length, which is the key to the $160 million Prudhoe Bay miscible injectant expansion project.
The 170,000 pound centrifugal compressor is powered by a 38,000 horsepower gas turbine — equivalent to the jet engine in a Boeing 747. The turbine starter is a 400 horsepower electric motor. Inside the module are 1,000 tons of steel, eight miles of wire and cables and two miles of piping.
Work began on the MIX module 14 months ago at the North Star Terminal at Anderson Dock in Anchorage and was managed by a team of ARCO, BP, Parsons and VECO personnel. The site was developed by BP for fabrication of modules for the Northstar field and when that project was delayed, the site was used for the MIX module.
Greg Sills, ARCO Alaska project manager for the project, said at the ceremonies that the work force at the module site peaked at 120; statewide, including the module site, the MIX work force peaked at 215.
Work is expected to be completed on MIX at the North Slope in about two months, Sills said. By the end of 1999, MIX will add 20,000 barrels per day of incremental production at Prudhoe Bay and will increase ultimate Prudhoe Bay liquids recovery by 50 million barrels. MIX will increase Prudhoe Bay miscible injectant production by 20 percent and daily natural gas production and reinjection by 7.5 billion to 8 billion cubic feet a day.
Miscible injectant is a solvent injected into the Prudhoe Bay reservoir to increase oil recovery. The Prudhoe Bay miscible gas enhanced oil recovery is the world’s largest.
Total cost of the MIX project is $160 million; the module cost $80 million.
Henry McGee, ARCO’s Prudhoe Bay senior vice president, said “MIX is a reminder there’s still a lot of oil in our giant fields” and of the importance of work at existing fields as well as opening up new fields. Nothing has ever been built in Alaska like this before, he said, acknowledging the “high performance team” responsible for the module. And, he said, the work force put in more than 200,000 hours without a single lost-time accident.
MIX will benefit many Tim Holt, BP’s business unit leader for the Central North Slope, noted that Prudhoe Bay has been on production for 22 years and said it is BP’s view that with projects like MIX, Prudhoe will be producing for at least another 22 years.
“Projects like this will enable the life of mature fields such as Prudhoe and Kuparuk to be extended,” Holt said. “By lengthening the life of mature fields it’s actually going to open up opportunities for a lot of the smaller fields that are located in and around the big fields, to take advantage of the infrastructure such as this… So there will be many more new developments, smaller scale new developments, satellite type fields. Through projects like this those will become possible.”
Jim Branch, Alaska production manager for Exxon, called the MIX module “an excellent example of what can be built here in Alaska” with the producers and the service companies working together.
“And it’s also a testimony,” Branch said, “to the vision that Bill Allen has had for the industry here in Alaska — it’s no small feat to start a new business in our state. And I’d really like to congratulate Bill for that. I hope we’ll be able to stand here again in the future for more of these kinds of projects. It’s certainly our expectation, as Henry (McGee) said — that there are more things that can be developed in Alaska and more projects and there’s certainly more oil at Prudhoe Bay that we all want to work.”
Job came in at 10 percent under original bid “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?” asked Bill Allen, chief executive officer of VECO Corp., referring to the module behind podium. He and Pete Leathard, president of VECO, had been trying to convince people we could modules in Alaska for a long time, Allen said.
They started by building the first truckable modules, he said, but never gave up on the sea lift modules. “It took a lot of convincing,” Allen said.
After the Northstar project was held up, BP had the yard. “ARCO wanted the MIX built. And they both wanted it built here in Alaska. So ARCO and BP got together. BP furnished the yard, ARCO gave us the MIX contract and that’s how it happened.”
Leathard said that Alaska’s high wages and high cost of support made it difficult to bid competitively against companies in the Lower 48 where the costs are lower.
There was some skepticism, Leathard said, “that we could build these modules in the numbers of hours that we said we could do it.”
Confidence in the Alaska work force was well placed, he said, “And I’m happy to say that we not only have done it but we have done it a lot better. This job has come in over 10 percent under what we said it would be when we put our original bid in.”
And, he said, it was close to 20 percent better than what was considered the best project built in the past — the gas handling expansion project built on the Gulf Coast.
In concluding the module send-off, Sills noted that there was a slogan on the back of the module, adopted by the MIX project about two years ago, “the real difference is the people.”
“And before we conclude today I just want to say just one more time, thank you for working on this project, and for the friendship and support that you’ve given us over the last three years on MIX and over the last 40 years that ARCO’s done business in Alaska.”
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