Oil's new infrastructure.

• Author: Jones, Patricia
• Position: Alaska's North Slope

Getting North Slope oil out of the ground and to Valdez now costs less and is more environmentally friendly.

Amaze of pipe extends from the Nabors 28 oil site to the great expanse of the Arctic Ocean, which stretches across the far northern horizon. Most of the year, wind-roughed waves of crusted snow-covered tundra stretch as far as one can see to the south.

Only a thin line of pipe, which rests on steel supports about five feet above ground, snakes out from the drill rig and breaks up the seemingly untouched canvas in the eastern comer of Alaska's oil field developments.

That pipeline transports new oil from this remote field called Badami, estimated to contain about 120 million barrels of crude, to existing Prudhoe Bay infrastructure 28 miles away. There it joins the southward flow of oil to the port of Valdez.

At Badami, supervisors for principal owner BP Exploration Inc. must plan their work and supply deliveries carefully. In winter, crews construct temporary ice roads over the frozen ocean or on the coastal tundra. But those routes disappear in summer, replaced by ocean water or by the spongy, multi-colored tundra that becomes home for many migratory birds.

Crews and essential supplies are delivered by air during summer months, when those winter roads disappear.

The same sort of remote oil field, inaccessible by trucks except when temporary ice roads are constructed, is being built at Arco Alaska Inc.'s Alpine project, located on the western side of North Slope oil developments.

There, a 34-mile pipeline has been built to connect that 365-million-barrel oil field to existing transportation lines at Kuparuk, which eventually dumps into the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline.

Tapping remote oil fields without building permanent gravel roads is quite a change from conventional development in Alaska, but is quickly becoming the standard. Economics, as well as efforts to minimize environmental impacts, are driving the changes in North Slope developments.

"With these smaller fields that are being found ... the future is going to demand lower cost structure in production and development, or the fields aren't going to be economical to develop," said Martin Thurlow, Arco's project manager for Alpine. "And with periods of $10 per barrel oil prices, it makes it even tougher."

In addition to roadless access, Alpine and Badami have several other developmental traits in common. Both Arco and BP used new methods of crossing rivers on the North Slope: BP trenched pipeline through three small rivers, while Arco...