For Arctic oil exploration--Dowland-Bach's success is music to the ears.

• Author: Anderson, Tom
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Arctic Oil & Gas

What do English Renaissance composer and lutenist John Dowland and the Baroque period's most famous composer, Germany's Johann Sebastian Bach, have in common?

The answer is they're the namesakes of one of Alaska's largest control panel and chemical injection system manufacturing businesses in the state.

Anticipating Needs

It was more than forty years ago when Lynn Johnson lived on Campbell Lake in Anchorage and worked for his parents at Alaska Helicopters. Johnson befriended neighbor Ed Clinton who was a distributor for Swagelok, a high-end premium compression tube fitting company, through Alaska Valve & Eitting. Clinton believed that with the North Slope coming online for drilling by the mid-1970s, there would be a significant need for Arctic environment cold weather wellhead control safety systems.

After assessing viability and contacting the early oil company pioneers who were exploring in northern Alaska in the hope of securing a contract, Clinton and Johnson formed Dowland-Bach deeming the potential great they could achieve substantive Arctic sales. The business name would become a conversation starter and door-opener in marketing efforts because of the partners' affinity for classical music.

As companies like Arco and BP were preparing to build infrastructure and drilling platforms in Alaska's burgeoning Arctic, the new Dowland-Bach team focused on control panels and systems that could function in extreme weather conditions. In the early 1970s, globally there were minimal to no specialized wellhead safety systems for freezing conditions absent oil recovery occurring in Arctic countries. Most electronic, hydraulic, and pneumatic didn't function well in extreme cold weather. The technologies that did exist for such drilling belonged to the military.

Niche Market

Dowland-Bach found a niche that would blossom over forty years of specialization. The partners' business plan was timely, and as resource development sprouted across the state, so too did Dowland-Bach's customer base. In four decades the spectrum of products and services the company has developed is impressive, ranging from control systems to automation and engineering services, and the majority of which are part of Alaska's record for safe oil and gas transfer to market. As Johnson admits, "Our uniqueness has been and remains that we can plan, engineer, and then build panels and specialized componentry. While most companies contract with an engineering firm for design and then...