Arctic logistics for the oil and gas industry: transportation is challenging and complicated.

• Author: Evans, Eliza
• Position: OIL & GAS

In much of Alaska's Arctic, the sun does not appear in the sky from late November until mid-January. As sunrise blends straight into sunset, a vague, dusky light seeps over the horizon for only a few hours a day. The moon orbits the sky in the winter, much as the sun orbits the sky in the summer.

Near the ocean, the Arctic's maritime climate includes wet, stormy winters, with annual snow and rainfall as high as forty-nine inches. The Arctic interior includes severe weather and frigid temperatures. North of the Brooks Range, February temperatures average minus four degree fahrenheit with extreme lows frequently dropping below minus forty. South of the Brooks Range temperatures average minus fifteen to minus twenty degrees, with lows periodically reaching minus sixty.

Barriers to Transportation

To say Alaska's Arctic presents a challenging environment to transportation in the oil and gas industry is an understatement. Limited navigation infrastructure, temperature and climatic extremes, permafrost, shallow draft constraints, a lack of sufficient docks, dynamic ice conditions, and environmental sensitivities require meticulous planning, ingenuity, high operating standards, and an array of equipment and technology. It is potentially dangerous work, especially given the extremely remote location. The Alaska Deep-Draft Arctic Port Study, conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Alaska State Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, states the US Coast Guard response time from the nearest station to the northern reaches of Alaska is seven days by cutter.

Prudhoe Bay is home to the only dock in Alaska's Arctic capable of serving the needs of the oil and gas industry. Winter temperatures reach as low as minus fifty-six degrees and an average of twenty inches of snow falls per year. Prudhoe Bay's population of just over two thousand residents is employees of oil drilling or production and support companies. An eight hundred-mile pipeline transports crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, where it is shipped via marine tankers to terminals throughout the United States.

The primary means of public transportation to Alaska's Arctic is by air; Deadhorse is approximately 626 air miles from Anchorage and has a state-owned gravel and asphalt airstrip which can be reached via commercial airlines. There is also a private gravel airstrip owned and maintained by ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. Deadhorse is at the northernmost reaches of the US...