Helicopter support services for the oil and gas industry.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: OIL & GAS - Cover story

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Alaska often presents challenges to industry; the solutions to those challenges can be as varied as the challenges themselves. In particular, transportation around the state of Alaska, especially to rural areas where much of Alaska's resource extraction takes place, is generally a logistic puzzle; some solutions require the railroad, marine, and air transportation to move a single load. A significant piece of many of those puzzles is helicopter support. Helicopters are unique in that they don't require any infrastructure--manmade or naturally occurring. They can take off or land just about anywhere. Even marine transportation requires naturally occurring bodies of water with certain depths or manufactured canals or ports. But a helicopter can pick itself up and put itself down just about anywhere; while they aren't necessary for every oil and gas operation, there are certain areas in which they are the exact piece the puzzle needs.

Erickson

One of the companies providing these vital services to the Alaska oil and gas industry is Erickson, an Oregon-based company that has global operations. Worldwide they provide services for firefighting, timber harvesting, oil and gas, manufacturing, and utility construction, as well as services to government.

According to the company, their oil and gas services started in Peru in 1998. In 2013, Erickson acquired Air Amazonia in Brazil, and expanded its South America operations. Erickson has been operating in Alaska since 2013; however, the company purchased all of Evergreen Helicopters Alaska assets at the time, took on some of Evergreens contracts (including flying residents to and from Little Diomede), and hired much of Evergreen's workforce, which means the company retains and utilizes fifty-five years of legacy knowledge of working in the last Frontier.

Erickson provides services state-wide. Their main hub is at Merrill Field in Anchorage, according to Business Development Manager-Alaska Chris Maynard, but they have remote centers across Alaska, including in Nome, Prudhoe Bay, and Kenai. "We don't solely focus on oil and gas," Maynard says, "but it happens to be one of our larger markets" in Alaska.

The Famous Sikorsky S-64 Aircrane

Maynard says the company is known for the Erickson Aircrane, the Sikorsky S-64, which can lift "up to twenty-five thousand pounds." Erickson bought the type certificate and manufacturing rights for the Sikorsky S-64 in 1992, "so we are the only...