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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Alaska Anvil: Thriving on engineering challenges Parent company provides proud tradition, depth of expertise for Alaskan provider of engineering and project management services Petroleum News Alaska
Alaska Anvil Inc. is a considerable presence in the Alaska oil industry, but like the tip of an iceberg, the engineering and project management firm has much more heft than meets the eye.
The Anchorage-based company draws on the strength and traditions of its parent company, Anvil Corp.
Anvil Corp. was founded in 1971 in Ferndale, Wash., by Loren K. “Larry” Levorsen, who has since retired but is still the chairman of the board. From two people at the first office, the company has grown to more than 650 employees. Anvil puts its people first; in fact, in 1996 the company completed a transition from a privately held firm to an employee-owned ESOP company, said Ronald Vekved, president of Anvil Corp.
The transition continues today as the company rewards employees with ownership and a share of company profits. Employees hold more than 50 percent of the voting stock.
Company founder Levorsen had a fair amount of Alaska experience before the formation of Anvil Corp. In 1969 Levorsen was superintendent of construction for Bechtel Inc. at the Phillips Petroleum Co. LNG plant in Nikiski. Further advancement of the oil industry and other industries in Alaska would create an ongoing climate of opportunity for Anvil Corp. Jobs in Alaska are a natural fit with the company’s strategy of pursuing energy-related projects in the Pacific Northwest.
Anvil Corp. entered the Alaska scene in the early 1970s with a job for UV Industries of Salt Lake City to install a power plant and distribution system at a gold dredge in Nome.
Module construction boosts Anvil The use of modular facilities in Alaska oil fields gave Anvil the opportunity to strengthen its ties to the petrochemical industry in the state. The company rose to the challenge by teaming up with W.M. Snelson, president of Snelson Companies, Inc. Snelson-Anvil Inc. was formed to construct modules for the petrochemical and energy industries, with an emphasis on serving companies engaged in developing the Cook Inlet and North Slope oil fields.
The idea, as stated in a Snelson-Anvil brochure, was to meet the need for facilities to process the Arctic’s vast reservoir of raw materials, along with housing and other services, “by designing modules and building them in locations more suited to the task.” Snelson-Anvil was involved in the early days of oil production on the North Slope. In 1975, the company delivered a trio of gathering centers to the Prudhoe Bay field from its yard in Anacortes, Wash. In Cook Inlet, the company was active as well on the Urea plant for Union-Collier Inc. at Nikiski.
In the early 1980s, the company was involved in delivering the modular infrastructure of the Kuparuk field, including drill-site modules, housing and accommodations, and the central processing facility.
The company divested the module fabrication yard in 1985 because it saw the movement toward smaller, truckable modules. What’s more, many of the large facilities in Alaska were already in place.
Alaska Anvil is formed Also in the early 1980s, the company recognized that it could better serve its burgeoning Alaska business with a corporate presence in the state. On Dec. 24, 1984, Alaska Anvil Inc. opened in Anchorage as a wholly owned subsidiary of Anvil Corp. with a staff of one. Today Alaska Anvil has 175 employees.
“We serve the industry from the well to the finished product terminals,” said Frank Weiss, Alaska Anvil president and manager.
In the late 1980s, Alaska Anvil worked in Nome with WestGold on Bima, a 558-foot long bucket line dredge — the world’s largest ocean-going gold dredge at the time. Bima was a retrofit of a Malaysian tin dredge that churned through 10,000 cubic yards to 20,000 cubic yards of gold-bearing ocean sediment per day. Alaska Anvil also assisted WestGold with a sled-mounted drilling unit that went onto the ice pack to drill and test ore quality during the winter months when the dredge was idle.
In the meantime Alaska Anvil worked on projects for all of Alaska’s major refineries, as well as with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. and Sohio. The 1984-1985 expansion of the Mapco refinery in North Pole added a crude unit and gasoline plant under a direct contract with Anvil in conjunction with OceanTech. This work led to an ongoing relationship between Alaska Anvil and the refinery’s new owner, Williams Cos. Inc. Alaska Anvil gets the call when the refinery needs support services or modifications at the terminal.
In 1992, the industry went to the alliance system of purchasing, and in November 1992 Alaska Anvil was awarded an alliance contract with ARCO Alaska Inc. (Now Phillips Alaska Inc.) Today Phillips and Alyeska are major clients of Alaska Anvil.
Anvil’s relationship with Phillips spans more than 30 years, Vekved said, since the first barrel of North Slope crude hit ARCO’s Cherry Point, Wash., refinery in 1971. Anvil’s Levorsen was involved in the construction of the refinery, which was designed to process 100,000 barrels of North Slope crude per day. Today, the refinery processes more than 230,000 barrels per day, has grown to cover a square mile, and is the largest such facility in Washington state, according to its new owner, BP. Anvil was instrumental in upgrades to the plant, and continues to service the refinery. Through the work at Cherry Point, Anvil counts BP among its clients.
At Kuparuk, Alaska Anvil has been a part of recent satellite field development including Tarn, Tabasco and Meltwater, including enhanced recovery programs using miscible injectants. In addition to small-scale and large-scale recovery projects, the firm has been involved with gas handling and expansion projects.
Anvil engineered a Frame 6 Gas Turbine 45-megawatt power plant for the Central Processing Facility 1 of the Kuparuk River Unit, along with a power grid for electric distribution around the field. The design of the Kuparuk electric system is based on an Anvil study aimed at meeting present and future needs at the field.
The company has developed unique solutions for some of the formidable challenges Arctic oil development has faced. At the first seawater treatment plant at Prudhoe Bay, for example, a method was needed to level the sea floor to set the water plant. The job required a tolerance of plus or minus two inches. Anvil responded with a custom undersea grader fabricated at its Ferndale plant. The grader was an odd-looking piece of equipment, but it got the job done.
Alaska Anvil’s branch office in North Kenai allows the company to support Cook Inlet producers and platforms. Phillips is a major client in the area with its LNG plant and Tyonek production platform. Other clients include XTO Energy Inc., Tesoro Petroleum Corp., Forest Oil Corp., Unocal, and Marathon Oil Co.
Alaska Anvil made a further commitment to Alaska with the purchase of the company’s Alaska headquarters building in 1998, located at 509 W. 3rd Ave. in Anchorage.
Alaska means more than just a lucrative market for Anvil Corp. services, Vekved said. One o
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