Oil Patch Insider

Wadeen Hepworth

Insider this week: California firm to do KKPL pipe coating, ASRC moves, Haul Road closes for 4 days, lassoing icebergs offshore Canada

DOT ANNOUNCES HAUL ROAD CLOSURES .…. The Dalton Highway (also known as the Haul Road) will be closed from Mile 111 to Mile 144 for several days during September as construction crews work on the road and repairbridges damaged by flooding.

You may remember Mother Nature got a little carried away when rain-swollen rivers on the North Slope washed out several sections of the road two weeks ago. (See pages 9,10,11 in the Aug. 25 issue of Petroleum News • Alaska.)

The 414-mile highway is the road link from the Interior to the North Slope.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said construction will be going on seven days a week until mid-September. The road will be closed Sept. 7, 10, 12 and 14. One lane traffic and some delays will be experienced at other times during the month.

For current closure information, call the DOT’s 24-hour hot line at (888) 401-5120.

GOLDEN NORTH LETS LOOSE…. If you’ve noticed the Golden North trucks lining up outside the new Arctic Slope Regional Corp. building at 3900 C Street in Anchorage, that’s because the occupants are moving in.

Golden North Van Lines was awarded the job at the end of July but couldn’t talk about it publicly until the last week of August.

Golden North is moving office furnishings including computers, printers, scanners and more into the new ASRC building.

Serena Sura, an account manager at Golden North, bid the job. Serena and Brian Atkins, also an account manager, are the project coordinators. Brian said the move is a ‘solid move’ meaning they are working seven days a week from start to finish. The move is progressing at a rate of about one subsidiary per week.

Greg Gapinski, president of ASRC Service Center Inc., said approximately 400 ASRC personnel from at least a dozen ASRC subsidiaries are being moved into the building to occupy modular work stations and private offices. The building will be known simply as the “ASRC Building.”

Greg said ASRC leases the building from owner Centerpoint LLC and that Centerpoint’s sister company, JL Properties, is responsible for the building management.

All floors scheduled for occupancy are finished. Greg said, “We do not have an exact date the move will be completed, however, we project that if all runs smoothly, we can be finished by the end of October. ”

LASSOING ICEBERGS…. You may have received an e-mail with a beautiful picture of an iceberg photographed half above and below the surface of the ocean (see picture above). Along with the picture was the caption that the iceberg was one of many that Global Marine Drilling (now Global Santa Fe Drilling) had to tow because of the danger to their rigs off St. John’s, Newfoundland.

The spectacular nature of the picture started a quest to confirm its existence, trace its origin and ask permission to use it for this column. The search revealed the picture is jokingly called the “international e-mail” because it has circled the globe and is computer created.

Putting aside disappointment we continued on the trail and discovered the “cowboys who lasso icebergs.”

A call to Global in St. Johns sent us to Secunda Marine Services (www.secunda.com) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and an interesting conversation with Mike Zelman, chartering manager. Mike has his Masters License and spent 12 years at sea, many of which were capturing icebergs. Diverting icebergs away from drilling rigs is a common spring activity for the company.

Mike said there are two processes used to divert the route of the icebergs that come down the Labrador Current along the edge of the Newfoundland Grand Banks. One is to water bomb the iceberg — firing a monitor on the ship’s bow with a water cannon that ejects 2 million gallons of water an hour. This method, however, is not as effective as attaching a cable to the berg and towing it out of the path of the rig.

Typically the towing vessel will stream an eight-inch diameter polypropylene eight strand braid about 3,000 in length around the berg and hook it into the main tow wire. Then they ‘lean’ on it to divert its direction. Because of the iceberg size and configuration, towing operations must be started a considerable distance ‘up current’ from the rig so that it can be diverted from its drift path. The iceberg in the above right picture weighed 75,000 tons.

Secunda operates a variety of sizes of horse-powered vessels but uses a 6,000 to 7,000 horsepower boat to pull the icebergs. The reason for the smaller horse-power is to keep the iceberg from flipping. It is important to pull the iceberg slowly because approximately 9/10 of the berg is below water and the strong under-tow of the Labrador Current pushes on the berg as it is towed. Generally, the tug heads south to deviate the berg to the east because of the drift in the current. They move at about one-half knot per hour.

The Burin Sea, shown above, is a multi-function ice class anchor-handling vessel. It is 247 feet long, 46 feet wide with a draft of 18 feet. It will accommodate a crew of 26 and has a maximum speed of 16 knots. The picture also shows the type of weather that is common to the area. Therefore its special features are listed as a certified oil recovery vessel and a 2 x Norsafe 750 fast rescue craft.

Mike also told us that wellheads and other sub-sea equipment must be installed in ‘glory holes’ about 12-15 feet deep which are excavated in the sea bed so that in the event a berg does come down it grounds out before it can cause a pollution incident.

We hope to get some good sea stories from Mike who after 12 years at sea decided to take a desk job. By the way he called the sea in the picture above ‘lumpy.’

CALIFORNIA COMPANY TO DO PIPE COATING FOR KKPL GASLINE…. An Insider source said Bredero Price has been selected to coat the majority of the 12-inch gas line pipe for the Kenai Kachemak Pipeline LLC.

The Fontana, Calif., based company will use the Pritec extruded polyethylene protective coating process. After it is coated, the pipe will be shipped by rail to Seattle where the cars will be put on a barge headed to Alaska.

Ten thousand feet of the pipe will be coated with the abrasion resistant (dual layer epoxy) method at A&A Coating in Pearland, Texas. The abrasion resistant method will be used on the over-the-road sections of the pipe.

The 33 miles of gas line pipe is due in Kenai in December. Construction of the KKPL is expected to begin in January and be completed by October 2003.

Oil Patch Insider is written by Petroleum News • Alaska columnist Wadeen Hepworth. The Insider appears three times per month. If you have news or a news tip for the Insider, Wadeen can be reached at (907) 770-3506 or via email at [email protected].