Alaska's North Slope infrastructure steadily growing into 2015.

• Author: Anderson, Tom
• Position: OIL & GAS

Alaska's North Slope has been active in resource development and the mobilization and demobilization of essential infrastructures since the late 1960s when petroleum was discovered in Prudhoe Bay.

Over the last fifty-five years, research, exploration, and drilling have occurred along the northern slope of the Brooks Range from the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi to Beaufort Seas. The topography of this often harsh terrain and climate includes annually thawing tundra, permafrost, ice, and various soils that require specific equipment and construction techniques to ensure preservation of the ecosystem and successful resource extraction.

As a result of critical dependency on equipment, housing, transportation routes, access, and habitat essentials like food, water, supplies, and communications, businesses have risen to meet the challenge and provide such services and technology. The infrastructure and support of all operations on the North Slope represents the core of the process that affords responsible resource development industries to thrive in the state.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Cruz Construction has been in the oil field services industry in Alaska since 1979. Owners Dave and Dana Cruz founded the company with an emphasis on infrastructure support in remote places like the North Slope. One impetus for the company's direction was the recognition that basic essentials like ice roads, tundra transports, exploration support, and ice pad mobilization-demobilization and oilrig movement are vital to the cold-weather Arctic development industry.

The company's menu of services is comprehensive and robust. When it comes to region infrastructure, Cruz handles planning, permitting, logistics, and reporting. The company offers ATV/LGP (All-Terrain/Low Ground Pressure) vehicles designed to move anything from small loads of equipment and supplies to the full-process demobilization of oilrigs and equipment. Unique to this geography, large rubber-tired vehicles and trailers afford access to rougher coastal regions along the Arctic Ocean. Tracked vehicles and trailers are also integrated into the construction process. In concert, these machines open remote land to careful, methodic, and temporary buildings and camps that house workers and equipment. Removing oil, gas, and minerals is the ultimate objective; stable and uninterrupted infrastructure is the foundation.

Cruz's main office is in Palmer. It has additional offices in Anchorage, Nikiski, and...