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First Northstar modules sail for North Slope BP Exploration (Alaska), contractors, state officials celebrate state’s new sealift module industry Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., its contractors and local and state officials took advantage of the sailing of the first Northstar sealift barge from Anchorage July 19 to stage a celebration of the project and the new industry, sealift modules, which it helped spawn in Alaska.
BP Exploration (Alaska) President Richard Campbell noted that five years ago the work would have been done on the West Coast or in Louisiana, and said BP spent $2 million to upgrade the North Star Terminal dock and yard for Northstar module construction. When Northstar was delayed, the facilities were first used for the miscible injection expansion project, MIX, a module for which was barged out of Anchorage last year for installation at Prudhoe Bay. 2000 sealift one barge The 2000 Northstar sealift, one barge, included the three-story, 700-ton permanent living quarters and utility module, a 115-ton tank skid and nine pipe racks. The module was assembled by VECO Construction at North Star Terminal and Stevedoring near the Port of Anchorage. VECO Engineering did infrastructure design, Arctic Structures Inc. built the permanent living quarters and Rockford Inc. built tankage.
The pipe racks, 140 tons each, were built by Natchiq Inc. subsidiary Alaska Petroleum Contractors at its fabrication facility in South Anchorage.
Next summer’s Northstar sealift will include the largest modules ever built in the state and require two barges for the two process modules, compressor module, pump skid and warehouse and shop building. The process modules weigh in at 3,500 tons and 3,700 tons and the compressor module at 3,500 tons. Alpine, MIX modules sailed in 1999 The 2,500-ton MIX compressor module, the 1999 sealift from Anchorage, was the largest module built so far in the state. It was built for the Prudhoe Bay miscible injectant expansion project — a 20 percent increase in miscible injectant production for the field and a 50 million barrel increase in liquids recovery.
Earlier in July 1999 two barges of modules, weighing a total of 4,500 tons, were loaded out from Nikiski for ARCO Alaska Inc.’s Alpine project. The Alpine modules were the first sealift modules ever constructed in Alaska.
Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles said this sailing was not the beginning of the Northstar voyage. It took a bipartisan effort in Juneau, he said, and it “grew to solid consensus it was the right thing to do — against the position that doing nothing was better than moving forward.”
Bill Allen, chairman and CEO of VECO Corp., credited BP with making the Anchorage yard available to build the MIX module and thanked the administration and the Legislature for help in getting Northstar going. Two who fought hard in Juneau for Northstar were the governor and Ramona Barnes, he said. “Tony Knowles may be a Democrat,” Allen said, “but … he has made this work.”
Bill Cheek, president and CEO of Natchiq Inc., said “our industry has grown leaps and bounds in just a few years” providing jobs and economic benefits to Alaskans. He said he hoped to see modules built for the North Slope become routine, and while module sailings so far have occasioned big sendoffs, “I bet there will be a time when we no longer celebrate sea lifts.”
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