Operating Behind the Scenes: Oil and gas services suppliers keep the industry running smoothly.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: OIL & GAS

Brian Benson has spent more than forty years working with Alaska's oil and gas industry. As the Alaska area Vice President of Airgas, an Air Liquide America company, he has seen some major ups and downs in the industry.

"Some of the largest growth we saw was during the pipeline days," he says. "Then we had some contraction, and then more growth, and then some contraction during the 2008 period when the country went through recession, and then steady growth until Alaska went through our recession here about three years ago."

The latest recession occurred after oil prices plummeted in 2014, erasing nearly 6,500 jobs and $680 million in wages, according to a 2017 study by the McDowell Group commissioned by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association.

Benson is seeing signs of a brighter future.

"We're starting to see some exciting growth," he says. "I don't want to be political, but the government has changed. It has become more business-friendly, so the players up on the Slope are starting to get busy with work that has been on the books for two or three years. And we're seeing growth within the North Slope as exploration plays westward into the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska."

That's good news for the thousands of people who work for the hundreds of companies that keep Alaska's oil and gas industry up and running. Oil and gas provides the lion's share of revenue for the state. The industry also is responsible for about one in six jobs in the private sector, or about $13-2 billion in wages, according to McDowell Group.

Alaska's North Slope is remote by nearly any definition. Only one road--mostly two-lane, unpaved, steep, and winding in places--leads to the sprawling oil and gas operations that spread out from a hub at Deadhorse. Barges operate in a narrow window when ice recedes in the Beaufort Sea each summer, and blizzards often delay air travel to and from the region. But the North Slope, along with oil and gas operations on the Kenai Peninsula and Cook Inlet, is the economic lifeblood for Alaska. The oil and gas services industry helps keep that blood pumping.

While the big oil and gas companies and the trans-Alaska pipeline directly employed 4,275 workers in 2016, oil and gas support businesses employed 6,095, according to the McDowell Group study.

Thousands of people work on the Slope. Not only do they need the equipment and tools to do their jobs, they also need transportation, housing, food, and other amenities. These are supplied by...