Roads to resources paved with ice: construction, maintenance, travel times standardized.

• Author: Campbell, Blythe
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

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Gary Schultz flew over miles of Alaska tundra this summer, stopping in four or five places to hike in the brief Arctic summer. Schultz, manager of the Northern Oil & Gas Team of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, was surveying the route where a 30-mile ice road, ice pads and ice runways supported Chevron's winter drilling program in the White Hills. "It was a beautiful job," said Shultz. "On the ground, the impacts were difficult to see."

Schulz has been working on ice road permitting since 1990, and says the industry and agencies have learned a lot in that time. When the U.S. Navy began oil and gas exploration in the Arctic in the 1940s, they bulldozed roads directly onto the tundra. This destroyed vegetation and thawed the underlying permafrost, leaving ditches across the landscape still visible today. The Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, first established in 1947 in Barrow, began to study ways to reduce impacts on permafrost.

Road construction techniques evolved quickly as researchers, agencies and industry learned more about the environment. Today, most oil exploration occurs in the winter months, when frozen ground allows access with less damage to the tundra. Ice roads, first used in the 1970s, make it possible to mobilize heavy equipment into an exploration site and work through the winter. Once the equipment is moved out, the ice melts, leaving very little trace of the industrial activity.

ICE ROAD CONSTRUCTION

Cruz Construction, based in Palmer, built the ice roads, ice pads and ice runways that supported the two-year Chevron White Hills exploration program, and the company is proud of its work. Jeff Miller, general manager, says the firm and its founder have nearly 30 years of experience in ice road construction. "We've made a lot of good mistakes and that teaches us lessons," says Miller, who is in his seventh year with Cruz Construction. Dave Cruz founded the company after he worked for many years building ice roads with Kodiak Oilfield Haulers, which later became Peak Oilfield Services.

Choosing a route for an ice road requires the study and analysis of many factors. For a typical project, Cruz does site reconnaissance with planes and helicopters, then consults maps and studies contours to understand the terrain and identify water sources. While terrain is important, access to water governs the final route selection because of the large volume of water required to construct an ice road that will allow safe transport of heavy loads and protect the environment.

"Every lake varies," says Miller. "We do fish studies to determine what type offish is in the lake, and that will dictate whether we can get water from the lake, and how much."

Cruz blades snow off the lakes to remove the insulating layer so the ice will freeze...