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Foothills open for tundra travel Ongoing modeling by Alaska agency results in earliest access to North Slope’s eastern coast in eight years Patricia Jones Petroleum News Contributing Writer
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources opened the lower and upper Foothills areas of the North Slope for tundra travel on Jan. 29.
It was the final state-regulated area to be opened for exploration access, Harry Bader, the department’s northern region land manager, told Petroleum News on Jan. 30.
The department opened the eastern coastal area — from Prudhoe Bay east — on Dec. 23, the earliest heavy equipment access to the frozen tundra in eight years.
“That’s in spite of a warmer winter than normal,” Bader said. “We had two weather events — an ice storm event on Oct. 30, which is very rare; and a significant snowfall that insulated the ground.”
The state’s western coastal tundra opening was Jan. 9, he added.
The earlier opening this winter came in part due to ongoing research being gathered to develop a computer model that will help state regulators scientifically determine winter tundra travel periods on the North Slope.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, in collaboration with Yale University and with $270,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and in-kind contributions from industry, is leading the research effort.
Since Oct. 4, 2002, researchers have spent one week on and one week off the slope, gathering data for the modeling project, Bader said. At 30 monitoring stations, crews used slide hammers to determine the hardness of the ground. Snow depth was measured and the researchers also looked for the existence of and measured the depth of snow slabs.
Weeks of on-site ground sampling helped move up the first opening date by 10 days to two weeks, Bader said, “… without sacrificing the standards of tundra resistance.”
The earlier access was based not on statistical or quantitative data, he said, but on using the ground research information more as a case study.
“I felt comfortable opening the tundra at the time I believe was closer to the point in time that the tundra was ready to be on,” he said. “The intensive sampling provided a context that did have an effect.”
Final ground data from test areas will be collected next summer, and the computer modeling effort will continue, Bader said. “Parts of the model definitely will be used in the coming season,” he said. Phased opening allows earlier access Last winter was the first time state regulators divided the North Slope into four areas based on weather and ground conditions, allowing winter access in stages.
“For 30 years, the North Slope was treated as a single unit,” Bader said. “It will be hard to compare future openings with past data, because we now have these progressive openings.”
The modeling research project is designed to offer a scientifically based alternative to standards currently used by the department to determine exploration and development access on North Slope tundra. Since the 1960s, state regulators have required that tundra be frozen at least 12 inches deep and have six inches of snow cover before winter travel is allowed.
Using those criteria has resulted in a decrease in tundra travel days available to exploration crews, due to increasingly warmer winters, Bader said.
In 1970, regulators allowed tundra travel for 210 days, compared to 103 days in 2002. The study’s objective is to increase the exploration access window on the North Slope to at least 130 days per season. Industry participation continues Initial research work began in 2002 when department workers gathered data in the Brooks Range foothills, working with Anadarko Petroleum seismic crews.
Such logistical collaboration with industry continued through this fall’s data gathering work, Bader said.
“A conservative estimate of the goods and services provided by the oil service industry and the oil companies themselves certainly exceeded $80,000,” he said. “More important than the value was that their contributions were critical. We could not have done it without their logistics.”
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