Oil's new face.

• Author: Jones, Patricia
• Position: Alaskan oil industry

Though some North Slope module construction has been delayed due to oil industry setbacks, there is still plenty of work being done across Alaska.

Alaska's oil industry has provided new work opportunities in both Anchorage and Fairbanks in recent months, despite recent record low crude prices and oil industry layoffs.

Unlike the office or upper management positions that typically make up oil industry work conducted in the state's two largest urban areas, these new jobs are much hike those found on Alaska's North Slope - intense, physical challenges that face a constantly ticking deadline.

The new work comes from construction of modules - steel frame self-contained buildings that house pumps and pipes, used to pull crude oil from deep underground and transport it to market.

Modules can be small buildings, the size of a semi-truck trailer, or massive nine-story structures, like the gas-compression module VECO Corp. is building at the Port of Anchorage.

"This is really a test of whether Alaska companies are equal to the job of building these large facilities," said Arco Alaska Inc.'s spokesperson Ronnie Chappell, who can see VECO's progress from his office in downtown Anchorage.

Previously, construction of North Slope modules went to Outside contractors, especially during the first years of Alaska's blossoming oil industry.

About 10 years ago, Alaska businesses in both Anchorage and Fairbanks won their first contracts to build some of the smaller buildings used on the North Slope, called truckable modules, because they could be hauled to the remote oil fields using semi-trucks.

But Lower 48 construction firms continued to win construction jobs for the bigger and more costly sea-lift modules, which are shipped to the Slope by ocean-going barges.

That trend changed with the recent flurry of oil field construction projects, financed by Alaska's oil producers Arco and BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. Modules needed for Alpine and the MIX project at Prudhoe Bay are being built in Alaska.

"We kick-started a whole new Alaska industry when we awarded contracts to two Alaska companies for the fabrication of the first sea-lift scale modules ever built in Alaska," said Kevin Meyers, Arco's president, in a recent speech. "When Alaska companies and contractors are competitive, they will get the work. And we're not afraid to give them a chance to succeed."

Sea-lift Construction Starts

In addition to VECO's huge gas compression project, scheduled to be finished...