Denali gas pipeline work kicks off in Tok area: survey crews identify, stake potential route.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: OIL & GAS

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Working in still-standing dead trees from a recent burn on the west bank of the Tok River, Jimmy Gee took readings from surveyor equipment planted on top of a recently driven rebar survey stake marked with fluorescent pink and blue ribbons, and capped with the following inscription, "Alaska Gas Pipeline 2008."

Gee was standing on the proposed center line for the pipeline construction route being advanced by partners B P Alaska and ConocoPhillips, under the Denali-The Alaska Gas Pipeline LLC plan. A Wasilla resident working for PND (Peratrovich, Nottingham and Drage Engineers), one of several Alaska contractors conducting gas pipeline field work this summer, Gee explained that he and his coworkers were surveying five different potential pipeline crossings at this section of the Tok River, located some two river miles downriver from the Alaska Highway bridge.

In addition to the center line, where Gee was standing, two potential crossings were identified up river, and two downriver, a few hundred feet in each direction.

"This is the 26th version of this pipeline project, so we know where we want to go," said Craig Dotson, an Anchorage-based ConocoPhillips employee and project manager for the Denali 2008 development program, who was visiting the site in late July.

This summer's field work, budgeted at about $40 million, will allow the consortium to fill in the blanks where field-data for the proposed gas pipeline route is a little thin, particularly from Delta Junction east to the border. Results of the summer's field work will "support permit applications and a high-quality cost estimate for the immense project," the partners said in a June 19 release, announcing the opening of the Tok field office.

Gee, like many of the roughly 60 field workers assigned to the pipeline route work this past summer, was based out of Tok for the season. Except for a few days around the 4th of July, he and other PND surveyors had been in Tok since May 26. "You get to see a lot of different people," he said. "The weather has been good the last week or so."

Last summer, the field workers based in Tok were being housed in local hotels or bed-and-breakfast-type of lodging. Many are taking their meals at local restaurants such as Fast Eddy's, which was busy in late July even in the mid-afternoon, not typically a peak meal hour.

"Our room lacks a refrigerator so we're depending on a cooler, but we're not in tents, so I'm happy," commented one...