North slope summer activity: construction and maintenance keep contractors busy.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: OIL & GAS

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Maintenance work is actually increasing in the large North Slope producing fields because much of the production infrastructure, such as the process plants and pipeline, is aging. BP and ConocoPhillips, the major field operators on the slope, estimate that about 60 percent to 70 percent of their total annual capital investment in the fields now goes to maintenance and only 30 percent to 40 percent to projects like new wells and production pads that will produce more oil.

North Slope contractors are busy this summer with new building and major maintenance projects. Winter is typically the busiest construction season because equipment can be moved overland on ice and snow roads, but summer is busy, too, because it is typically the time for major production facility "turnarounds," periods of shutdown for major maintenance and upgrades.

BP will do turnarounds in two of the six oil and gas process plants in the Prudhoe Bay field: Flow Station 2 in the east part of the field and Gathering Center 3 in the west, according to company spokeswoman Dawn Patience.

The work will occur from mid-June to late August and will be coordinated with periods of maintenance shutdowns of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, so the effects on production will be minimized, Patience says.

The work being done includes safety upgrades, system inspections, and major maintenance, all of which must be done when a plant is temporarily shut down. The work will require about 270 additional workers, mostly contractor employees, on top of BP's normal workforce for the Prudhoe Bay held, she says.

Major maintenance work in 2013 is substantial, but it is less than what was done last summer, when BP had five Prudhoe Bay process plants down for turnarounds. There were about eight-hundred additional workers hired for those projects, done in summer 2012.

Conoco Phillips is also planning major projects at the Kuparuk River and Alpine fields, the company's spokeswoman, Natalie Lowman, says. "We currently have some vessel and pipeline maintenance work underway at CPF3 (Central Processing Facility 3) that should be complete by late July," Lowman says.

"CPF-1 will be shut down for about twenty days in August," she says. CPF3 and CPF-1 are two of the three major oil and gas processing plants in the Kuparuk field.

In addition, Lowman says the Alpine field "has a planned maintenance shutdown in early August that will last about four days."

Maintenance work is actually...