Alyeska letting TAPS fabrication contracts

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief

Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. started awarding fabrication contracts for strategic reconfiguration work on the trans-Alaska pipeline late last year, and hopes to have all of the module fabrication contracts awarded by the end of January, Alyeska spokesman Mike Heatwole told Petroleum News Jan. 19.

Physical work for Alyeska’s $250 million strategic reconfiguration of the $250 million trans-Alaska pipeline started last year, Heatwole said, and during the scheduled maintenance shutdown last summer, “we did some of the tie-in work to get the stations we’re going to convert ready for … full construction this year.”

2005 has been Alyeska’s goal for completion of the pipeline upgrades, approved by Alyeska owners BP Pipelines (Alaska), ConocoPhillips Transportation Alaska, ExxonMobil Pipeline Co., Williams Alaska Pipeline Co. and Unocal Pipeline Co. last March. Williams’ share of the pipeline is now owned by Koch Alaska Pipeline Co.

The pump station upgrades include installing electrically driven crude oil pumps at pump stations Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 9, increasing automation and upgrading control systems. Alyeska said when the project was approved by the owners that the new pump station units to be installed will be “modular and scalable to more easily accommodate changes in pipeline throughput.” The company said the new configuration will support current and projected oil flows “and can be modified in about 24 months to accommodate significant increases in throughput.”

Heatwole said Alyeska is competitively bidding the fabrication contracts, and contracts awarded so far have all gone to Alaska vendors and contractors.

Two one-day shutdowns will be scheduled this year to accommodate the work. Heatwole said they should take care of most of the construction. There will be a plan for the switchover to the new equipment, he said, and once the construction phase is complete a lot of existing equipment at the stations will be run concurrently with new equipment, “until we can do the full switchover and make sure it tests out and meets all of our performance requirements.”

2005 is the target date for the switchover, but Heatwole said that depends on meeting the company’s construction and testing schedule.

There has, for example, been “a schedule challenge without electric motors,” he said, with a functional test scheduled in April, because the motors “didn’t meet some of our standards.” Alyeska is doing technical analysis on the motors in January, and Heatwole said this issue is “being worked out even as we speak.”

Work on strategic reconfiguration at Alyeska’s Valdez Marine Terminal is still in the preliminary engineering phase, Heatwole said, “where we put some real analysis and engineering work behind the conceptual ideas.” A formal plan for the terminal work is expected later this year.

Alyeska officials said in May that preliminary engineering funding had been approved for proposed changes at the terminal which, like the pipeline, currently handles half its design capacity. There are 18 tanks at the terminal and the plan is to take the entire west tank farm and some of the tanks at the east farm out of service, leaving 12 to 14 tanks in service. Internal floating lids would be installed on the tanks left in service, eliminating the need to handle vapors from the tanks. Vapors from tankers would be handled by vapor combustors. With the need for the vapor recovery portion of the power plant and vapor recovery system eliminated, power would come either as electricity from the local power grid or diesel-fired generators.

Heatwole said a draft finding of no significant impact on the environment was released in December. Alyeska submitted proposed terminal changes to the Joint Pipeline Office in August and JPO completed an environmental assessment of the proposed changes in December, finding no significant impact. Comments were received during a public comment period.

JPO spokeswoman Rhea DoBosh said the proposed changes — adding internal floating roofs on terminal crude oil storage tanks, reducing the number of tanks in use, removing the power vapor plant and replacing that system with new vapor combustors, replacing the existing pumped seawater fire water supply system with a gravity flow system and connecting to the commercial power grid or installing a new on-site diesel power plant — decrease the amount of equipment and hardware currently in use. The environmental assessment is being finalized now, DoBosh said Jan. 25.