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Hands-on petroleum engineer appointed to AOGCC Born and raised in Alaska, Julie Heusser has worked for BP and ARCO, has also done contract work for the companies Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Julie Heusser, appointed by Gov. Tony Knowles in October to the petroleum engineer seat on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission formerly held by Bob Christenson, is a life-long Alaskan and has worked as a petroleum engineer for both BP and ARCO.
Heusser, born and raised in Anchorage, graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a bachelor of science degree in petroleum engineering in 1977 and came back to work in Alaska.
“And I have lived in Anchorage all my life except when I was away at school and also when I worked overseas for a year in Scotland,” Heusser told PNA in a November interview.
Heusser has worked for both BP and ARCO, and most recently has taken consulting work, primarily for BP. Prudhoe Bay start-up first job Her first job out of college was working for BP as a field engineer, the first woman engineer BP had hired to work in the field. She was at Prudhoe Bay in the western operating area before the field officially came on line, commissioning wells for oil in.
This was true field work. There were well houses in the field, Heusser said, but “they didn’t initially have wellhead platforms that provided you with steps to get up and actually operate the well. Because I was small and I was nimble, I climbed those trees.”
Once she was up, somebody would throw her a rope attached to a high-pressure hose, and she would haul the hose up for pressure testing tubing and the inner annulus to make sure the wells were mechanically sound before the wells were perforated.
“We were testing wells and perforating wells and flowing wells to the gathering center and working closely with the operators and the facility people. It was very intense. The enthusiasm was high and the excitement was high.”
“It was the ideal job,” Heusser said. “It was perfect exposure to many, many practical things. It was hands on.” The evolution from Prudhoe Being at Prudhoe also gave Heusser a perspective on what the companies have done as subsequent North Slope fields were developed.
“I’ve seen the North Slope evolve. And I’ve seen oil companies learn from field to field and put their experience to work.” What was considered the norm at Prudhoe Bay wasn’t considered the norm when ARCO designed the Kuparuk field. There were modifications for Lisburne, and then Endicott and then Point McIntyre.
“Oil companies are learning all the time. And I’m impressed. … I’ve just seen the evolution,” she said.
Heusser married a fellow BP employee who was posted to Scotland with BP Oil International so she took a position with BP Petroleum Development in Aberdeen for a year doing reservoir engineering work. This was more of a desk job, but, Heusser said, “I was able to pick up some reservoir engineering skills and some modeling skills — very, very basic ones.” The couple agreed that they wanted to come back to Alaska. He was posted back to BP. The ARCO side of Prudhoe Bay She went to work for ARCO. From 1981 to 1996, Heusser held a variety of jobs with the company. She started off as a reservoir engineer in the Prudhoe Bay reservoir engineering group, but, Heusser said, “my love is operations and operations engineering” and she moved to the operations group at ARCO.
“And part of my responsibilities in that group were development planning” for the eastern half of the Prudhoe Bay field and also review of drilling completes and well work proposals from the western operating area.
“I was in a fortunate position of being able to see both sides of the field at once.”
Heusser continued to do field work in that job, primarily open hole logging. She then moved to the workover stimulation group. That group looked at treatments for wells, including rig workovers, coiled tubing, cement squeezes. Other people in the group specialized in fractures and acid stimulations.
“And so we were a group that basically fixed what was broke.”
Heusser took another slope job — then called annular communication engineer. Today, she said, it’s what is called a problem well engineer or a well integrity engineer, “and you troubleshoot mechanical problems with the wells.”
That job also gave her some exposure to the underground injection control program — or UIC — a program the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission oversees.
From troubleshooting wells, Heusser went on to “what ARCO called a well supervisor, which is, again, a field position” which included work at Point McIntyre, Lisburne and Prudhoe Bay.
Both her ARCO and BP jobs provided extensive field experience. “I have an appreciation for what it takes to do business in a hostile environment and I have an appreciation for just how hard it is and how dedicated people are,” she said. Time off, contracting Heusser took about a year and a half off, “and it was wonderful.” It allowed her, she said, to evaluate what she was doing and what she wanted to do. She realized that she loved engineering, loved petroleum engineering and loved problem solving.
“And that’s what I missed. I missed putting my brain to solving problems, working with others to solve problems.”
In 1996, Heusser started to take consulting work, working on a variety of projects, primarily for BP.
State, industry interest combined When the petroleum engineer commissioner position opened up, Heusser said she saw an opportunity to combine her interest in the state and her experience in the industry. She had worked with commission staff in the past.
“As an oil company employee I interacted with them and it was very positive.”
The staff at the commission have a variety of experience in a variety of areas throughout the state and elsewhere, she said. “And so you get many different perspectives when you open up a topic for discussion. Everybody has a different viewpoint and it’s very useful and that’s a plus, that’s definitely a plus.”
Heusser said she doesn’t think most people appreciate the scope of the commission’s responsibilities.
“There’s more to us than approving permits to drill or agreeing to issue injection orders or conservation orders. We have a myriad of responsibilities and that’s part of what I’m coming to appreciate. It’s an interesting place. It is not dull.” Roots in state Heusser’s family roots are in Alaska. Her grandparents moved from Wyoming in 1940, bringing Heusser’s mother and uncles.
Heusser said that her grandfather was an outdoorsman, and when a friend returned from Alaska with glowing reports, her grandfather wanted to move.
Her grandmother — after researching Alaska at the library — announced that she had two conditions for a move to Alaska: she and the children would follow him in very short order; and she wasn’t going anywhere without her gasoline-powered washing machine. There was no way, she declared, that she was going back to washing diapers for three small children on a washboard.
The family set out for the drive to Seattle in an old Ford coupe, “my grandfather and three young, young children in the front seat and my grandmother sat out back in the rumble seat.
“And she said it was the coldest damn ride in between Wyoming and Seattle she’d ever been on.” Behind the Ford coupe was a tiny trailer with a few personal possessions, rifle and fishing and equipment, and the washing machine.
They spent a year in Hope where her grandfather had a logging job and then moved to Anchorage.
Heusser’s grandfather ran a professional guide service for a while, and “all of these characters would kind of come floating through my grandparents’ house… people from the Bush that they had met along the way.
“And Alaska was truly small then… the way they described it, it was very open and welcoming.”
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