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Roads to Resources: Susitna RFP out Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities initiative would identify options for road-based access west of river Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
What’s one of the most inaccessible areas of Alaska? Try the west side of Cook Inlet in Southcentral, west of the Susitna River. You can barge in across Cook Inlet; you can fly in; you can build ice roads in the winter.
One Cook Inlet oil and gas producer has described working on the west side of Cook Inlet as more expensive than working on the North Slope, because at least there is a road to the North Slope.
Perhaps that might be changed? The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ Division of Program Development has a request for proposals out under the Roads to Resources initiative for a reconnaissance study of west Susitna access to resource development.
The work is estimated to begin Nov. 1 and end April 30; the cost is estimated at less than $100,000.
The RFP is for “an evaluation of one or more potential transportation corridors and river crossings to provide surface access to resource development opportunities west of the Susitna River,” specifically evaluation of road access options.
This is a preliminary analysis and does not include field work, the RFP says. Instead, work is to be based on published sources and interviews with “responsible parties.”
The state’s Roads to Resources initiative began under former Gov. Frank Murkowski and has been a priority for Gov. Sean Parnell with $34 million spent through early this year on proposals for roads to Ambler, Nome and Umiat. Umiat is furthest along, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers preparing an environmental impact statement for the project. The road to Umiat would serve both the Gubik and Umiat fields, currently under evaluation.
Cook Inlet access issues Access in Cook Inlet “stands between a lot of potential prospects and what could be real projects,” JR Wilcox, president of Cook Inlet Energy, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Meet Alaska conference in January of 2011.
You can build ice roads, he said, but they aren’t cheap and because of weather variations they don’t work every winter — and don’t give you long to work even when you can build them.
When it comes to development, use of gravel is prohibited “except by exception” and “if you don’t have gravel roads and pads it’s really hard to have an oil field.”
In addition there are refuges and state game refuges and critical habitat areas, which make access “very difficult,” Wilcox said.
He said the governor’s Roads to Resources “is a great initiative,” but said he thinks “the poster child of the whole program ought to be the 28 miles linking the Mat-Su to the Beluga-Tyonek area. That’s a very short road; it’s across state land in a permitted right of way; it’s been on the books since the late ’60s and that would immediately lower the operating cost for ... a lot of the western side of Cook Inlet because you could actually access things by truck.”
He said it’s a surprise to people that doing business on the west side of Cook Inlet can cost more than on the North Slope. One of the reasons for that, Wilcox said, is that there is a road to the North Slope, while there isn’t a road to the west side of Cook Inlet.
Resources, routes The RFP describes a resource component of the Susitna River access study west of the river, bounded in the north by Denali National Park, on the south by the Lake Clark Preserve and Wilderness and to the west by the ridgeline of the Alaska Range, with “consideration for possible routes through the Alaska Range to access the area further to the west.”
The access component of the study is the area “east of the Susitna River to the Parks Highway, and south of the Parks Highway Bridge on the Susitna.”
The resource component involves documenting potential opportunities on the west side of the Susitna River, including prospective mines; timber harvest; energy recovery such as oil and gas and geothermal; land that could be developed for residential or other uses; community benefits such as lower delivery costs; recreational access benefits; and long-term opportunities “such as surface access further to the west.”
For specific pending projects, such as mines in active exploration, or ore body definition, the study would include content, timing and mapping of the project.
The access component of the study includes documenting existing transportation and energy networks on the east side of the Susitna River from which access to a crossing would originate; existing rights of way, including unbuilt and unused ROW, including mapping and original granting instruments. All state and local government owned lands would be mapped.
Previous facility extension studies and surveys, barriers to surface transportation extensions and all energy facilities including transmission lines, pipelines and other generation, handling and delivery facilities would also be included.
Crossing location options A first-round selection would identify and evaluate one or more crossings of the Susitna River for access to the west, including the existing Parks Highway bridge south of Talkeetna.
Also included in the study are preliminary material site reconnaissance, preliminary hydrology reconnaissance, preliminary environmental review and transportation analysis and recommendation.
Documents resulting from the study may be used in preparation of a capital budget request and development of formal documentation for environmental and permitting efforts.
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