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Alaska one step closer to building road to NPR-A State issues RFP for Colville River Road; timetable calls for construction to start in 2007 and finish in 2009 Kay Cashman Petroleum News Publisher & Managing Editor
The state of Alaska is one step closer to building a road to the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. On Aug. 24, the Northern Region office of the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities released a request for proposals for an environmental impact statement for the Colville River Road project. The year-round, gravel road will connect the petroleum reserve with the North Slope road system and help fuel growth in Alaska’s oil and gas industry, the mainstay of the state’s economy.
The EIS, estimated to cost “in the range of $1 million or greater,” is scheduled to be finished by December 2006, “with final design complete by March 2007,” Mike McKinnon, project manager for the department, told Petroleum News Aug. 24.
Road construction is expected to start with staging in the summer of 2007 and be finished by the end of 2009. Connect with Spine Road The new road will connect with the Spine Road that runs through the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River oil fields. It will connect at the Spine’s western most point which is at the Tarn/Meltwater Road junction; then head west 15 miles, cross the Colville River, and end on Native land in NPR-A. There a connecting 2-3 mile road will be built to the village of Nuiqsut.
After looking at four possible crossing sites the decision to locate the bridge about three miles below Nuiqsut and 11 miles south of ConocoPhillips’ operations at Alpine, was “driven by the Colville River hydrology,” McKinnon said.
“The proposed crossing is closest to the most active zones of development. The project will also include opening of one or two new material sites in the area,” the department said in its project description.
The 18-mile long, 32 foot wide road would be built up with eight feet of gravel to protect the permafrost, McKinnon said.
While the review is under way, the department plans to work on preparing bid-ready designs for the construction work.
Approximately three-quarters of the total cost will go toward the Colville River bridge, McKinnon said.
How to pay for construction of the project, “developing a financial package, is part of the design effort that is currently underway,” he said.
The Fairbanks office of Peratrovich, Nottingham and Drage is the design team that put the RFP together, and continues to work on the project, “providing the department with engineering design services for the project and collecting field data necessary for the design. This field data will be available for incorporation into the EIS,” the department said. Result of two-year investigation In its public notice the department said the Colville River Road project was “the result of a two-year investigation of northern Alaska resource development opportunities” that identified the transportation infrastructure needed to make the developments feasible.
The need to improve access to oil and gas leases in NPR-A was determined to be the “most important investment” the state could make to promote resource development for Alaska’s economy,” the agency said.
Recent reductions in the North Slope ice road season and “a new generation of international oil and gas exploration opportunities combine to make all-season access important to continued development of North Slope oil and gas resources,” the department said.
McKinnon said there are still concerns about security and the operational aspects of using the Spine Road as an arterial route to access NPR-A.
The state has made a commitment to oil industry representatives that “the design process will include security and operations management plans … to ensure that security and operations are not adversely affected by the new road,” the agency said in its project description. Road to Badami, Point Thomson Another North Slope road project the state department of transportation is looking at is a road to the eastern Badami and Point Thomson fields, linking them with the existing North Slope road system.
“Within the next few weeks we will have our reconnaissance engineering and economic analysis from CH2M Hill and Northern Economics. After a DOT internal review we will make some public announcement about the findings,” McKinnon said.
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