Reaching Alaska's resources: heavy construction projects within natural resource sectors.

• Author: Swann, Kirsten
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

Alaska is a state built on natural resources, from oil and gas to mining, fish, and forests.

They provide tens of thousands of jobs and a multibillion-dollar economic impact. Natural resources are also the driving force behind most of the civil heavy construction projects taking place throughout the state this year.

Major construction on natural resource developments is set to take place from the far north to Southcentral and beyond. The work involves dozens of companies large and small: homegrown Alaska firms and Lower 48-based corporations with worldwide reach--and nearly everything in between.

All told, the heavy construction work set to take place in Alaska's natural resource sectors this year totals billions of dollars in project costs and progresses several long-awaited developments--particularly within Alaska's oil and gas industry.

North Slope

On the North Slope, construction is underway at CD-5, an Alpine satellite field under development by ConocoPhillips Alaska. The company says it plans on spending upwards of $1 billion to drill and develop the site and employed an estimated seven hundred people during peak construction.

In late March, the corporation also announced that it would be moving forward with construction at the Kuparuk viscous oil development 1H NEWS, the largest investment in viscous oil at Kuparuk in more than ten years.

The work is expected to add approximately eight thousand barrels of oil per day gross at peak production, and the project is expected to employ around 150 people during peak construction, according to ConocoPhillips.

The construction work includes adding a 9.3-acre extension to the existing Drill Site 1H and installing surface facilities to support four new production and fifteen injection wells, according to the company, and construction is expected to continue through 2016. First oil is anticipated in early 2017.

Construction work continues on new-build rigs Doyon 142 and Nabors CDR3, according to the corporation, and Drill Site 2S is also on schedule and should have first production by the end of this year. Work is also moving forward at Greater Mooses Tooth 1.

But the North Slope is hardly the only big construction zone when it comes to major resource development projects: Plenty of work is set to take place in Cook Inlet this year, too. Hilcorp planned construction of a 2.8-acre gravel pad and access road within its Ninilchik unit to drill up to two gas exploration wells targeting areas unreachable by a current pad, according to the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas.

Kenai Peninsula

Furie Operating Alaska LLC is also preparing to complete a few major construction milestones before beginning production from the Kitchen Lights Unit later this year.

The company's unitized leases sit in the center of Cook Inlet off the northwestern coast of the Kenai Peninsula, and Furie plans on installing a sixteen-mile subsea pipeline and monopod, in addition to its new onshore gas processing facility in Nikiski.

"It'll be a busy year," says Bruce Webb, Furies senior vice president.

Dependent on Cook Inlet ice and weather conditions, he says the construction season kicked off in mid to late April.

The process begins with horizontal-directional drilling (HDD), which starts from the onshore facility in Nikiski and travels through the bluff and under the tidal flats, emerging on the seabed floor about three thousand feet away from the bluff. This way, Webb says, the company is able to drill underneath the...