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Building resource roads Alaska’s industrial roads project directed at oil and gas, mining Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
The state of Alaska is working on road access to some remote resources, but the emphasis for most of Alaska will be on linking resources to marine transport.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities did a resource transportation analysis to see whether a road from the Fairbanks area to Northwest Alaska could access enough resource projects to be cost effective, says Mike McKinnon, senior planner with the department.
That analysis found that because of Alaska's size, its extensive coastline and widely spread resources, “the goal is to get products to the coast as quickly as possible,” McKinnon told the Resource Development Council April 21.
The driver in resource development, at least for minerals and coal, is inbound marine transportation for supplies and outbound marine transportation for ore.
The department received a $1.5 million appropriation in 2000 from then U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski to examine opportunities for transportation improvements in the resource development area.
After two years of work with CH2M Hill, McKinnon said, the department was able to take Gov. Murkowski a list of projects for review. The governor has approved the projects and the department is moving ahead.
The developments will be handled by an industrial roads program the department has established, “an independent engineering unit that's being put in place in Fairbanks,” McKinnon said, whose job is to move these projects forward.
Returns from oil and gas While the department looked at resource transportation for coal, copper, zinc and gold, McKinnon said it found the best investment returns would come from transportation improvements for North Slope oil and gas: a four-stage project, involving roads and a bridge across the Colville River to provide all-season access.
First, McKinnon said, is connecting the existing North Slope road system, the Spine Road through the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields, to a bridge crossing the Colville River from the Tarn area on the western side of Kuparuk. The road would be about 32 feet at the top and four feet deep, “and would be capable of handling all the ordinary loads that the oil industry uses for moves, including drill rig moves,” he said.
The bridge, a 3,300-foot crossing south of Nuiqsut, will cost in the vicinity of $150 million, McKinnon said. It would provide access to the west side of the Colville River and developments in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, making “that investment — in every calculation that we've made so far — a very strong one.”
The third phase is a mainline road into the northeastern NPR-A. It's a placeholder, McKinnon said, because the route into NPR-A hasn't been developed yet. It won't be an attempt to reach every prospect, he said, but would be a road from which the oil industry can build ice roads, allowing industry to reach small deposits that aren't economic with ice roads. McKinnon said the department will work with the Bureau of Land Management and industry on the road route.
The Colville River bridge will also allow a staging area in the vicinity of Nuiqsut for field development. The road to Nuiqsut The fourth stage is the road to Nuiqsut.
The department looked at access for Nuiqsut from the Spine Road, but there is so much industry activity on the road that it didn't seem practical as a route for Nuiqsut, McKinnon said.
When the department looked south of the Spine Road for an east-west route between Nuiqsut and the Dalton Highway, engineers found “you couldn't have picked a worse piece of country to build a road in: it's wet and it has limited utility.”
They looked farther south for a good route, east-west tending, but on good terrain.
The initial route was some 75 miles long, but when the department showed it to people in the industry, what they heard was that if the route started farther south on the Dalton Highway and went farther west before turning north, it would thread through an area of leases and lease opportunities that can't be accessed now.
Part of that access issue, McKinnon said, is that the on-tundra season when ice roads can be built has shrunk from 210 days in 1980 to 103 days in 2002. The other problem is that the terrain in this area makes ice road construction impractical.
Within the next couple of months the department will be moving “out of the planning and into the design stage” for the North Slope work. Roads to mines moving ahead The department is moving ahead with roads to mines with construction expected next summer at one project.
At the Rock Creek gold mine out of Nome there is an old cat trail that was turned into a road. “It's on unstable hillsides, steep grades,” McKinnon said, and the department is planning a new alignment from the Nome-Teller Road, three miles up into the Rock Creek area. This project will cost some $6-$8 million to build and is being advertised now out of Fairbanks.
The department also is looking at the Yukon-Kuskokwim gold area.
A port site is being defined on the Kuskokwim River side at Crooked Creek, McKinnon said, and the department is looking at a port site near Holy Cross on the Yukon River side.
A 12 to 14 mile access road would run from Crooked Creek to Donlin Creek, one of the world's largest gold mine opportunities. A general obligation bond of $4 million will cover the estimated $1.5 million design cost and a portion of the estimated $15-$20 million construction cost. Advertising for a design contract, to be complete in 2005, is expected in May. A two-year feasibility study has begun at the mine, McKinnon said: “And when they're ready to go, we'll have the project ready to go to construction.”
He said the road is expected to be in place by 2007.
Yukon port site A Yukon port site would support mining opportunities in the Flat, McGrath and Ruby areas. A road network could go toward Donlin Creek, or on a north-south axis to opportunities between Flat and McGrath.
The department has about three more months of planning for the alignment and sequencing of projects, “and then we'll get this one moved into the design stage as well,” McKinnon said.
Part of the Yukon port study involves the capital project requirements needed to create deep draft at the mouth of the Yukon River. The department is also looking at vessel design that could alleviate the need for capital improvements. Depth at shoreline is the issue on both the Arctic and western coasts, he said.
Coal, zinc exports The Arctic Slope Regional Corp. owns a rich coal resource at the Deadfall Syncline. “There is going to come a day when that resource will be able to move by 90-mile road down to the Red Dog port for export to the Asian markets,” McKinnon said. The coal is so rich that money could be made by exporting as little as 1-2 million tons a year to the Asian market for blending into existing operations.
This will probably be second generation for the industrial roads program.
The first stage planned by ASRC, in the next 10 years, is a mine-mouth power plant that would generate power for the Red Dog mine. Red Dog is looking for gas in the area, he said, but if that doesn't work out, power from a mine-mouth coal power plant is a strong opportunity.
In the second stage of development a 90-mile road from the coal mine to the Red Dog port offers an export opportunity for the coal.
A part of that project would be port development at Red Dog. The mine currently has a small barge facility where ore concentrate is loaded for transfer to a larger vessel offshore.
McKinnon said the Corps of Engineers, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, NANA and Teck Cominco are “looking at a proposal for a 16,000-foot dredge channel and turning basin that would allow that ship to come in to shore and pick up those loads directly.” That port expansion would open the opportunity for other exports.
He said they'll know within the next year whether the project can pass environmental hurdles. If the port expansion is a go, McKinnon said, “the connection between the port facility and the road network is eligible for federal aid highway funding” and the state will work on that as part of its industrial roads program. Heavy lift possible for Ambler McKinnon said the department also looked at roads for the Ambler mining district: It's “the one we struggled hardest with,” he said. The price of copper is a problem for Ambler: “When it gets a little better, things may move a little faster in that area.”
Technology may help solve the Ambler transportation problem, he said, specifically a hybrid aircraft, a dirigible. “It doesn't need a runway, it's capable of operating up to minus 40 degrees, which gives it about a 10-month operating window in the Arctic.”
McKinnon said the company building the craft was originally Australian owned, but the U.S. Department of Defense said it would do business with the company if it made itself a wholly owned U.S. corporation, which the company did.
McKinnon said a prototype of that aircraft, with a 35-ton capability, is expected next year, with capability expected to move up quickly to 200 tons.
The craft can land just about anywhere, he said, but it only operates at 90 miles per hour, so it would probably be used for short hauls from a staging area supplied by barges.
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