North slope conditions test workers: days and nights in Deadhorse and the oilfields.

• Author: Resz, Heather A.
• Position: OIL & GAS

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It takes folks of the hardiest mettle to handle working and living inside Mother Nature's cold, dark, Arctic icebox all day and night for weeks at a time. But every day--and every night--thousands of people get up and go to work in Alaska's remote North Slope oilfields. They work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for two-, three-, four- or six-weeks at a time.

They endure brutal weather where the mercury can sink to minus 68 degrees with a wind chill of minus 115 or colder for days or weeks. They cope with nearly two months of darkness when the winter sun never crests the horizon, and 75 days in the summer when the sun never sets.

Yet the wealth generated by these 4,000 or so hardy souls generates one in three jobs in Alaska, most State tax dollars and the Permanent Fund Dividend, according to a study by the Institute for Social and Economic Research. Alaska currently supplies 12 percent of the nation's domestic oil production, 3.4 percent of the country's oil consumption, according to U.S. Department of Energy data published in June.

'WE DO IN ONE WEEK WHAT MOST PEOPLE DO IN TWO'

It's June 1 and breakup season is nearing its end. The thermometer in Deadhorse reads 32 degrees. But the birds are coming back, and soon the water, grass and musk ox will follow.

"We do in one week what most people do in two," says Celeste Rose, expeditor for CH2M Hill Construction.

For the next 21 days, she'll work from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., picking up materials and people in Deadhorse and driving them down the 16-mile dirt road to BP's Liberty Field. Speed limits on the road vary from 25 to 45 miles per hour and are strictly enforced, Rose said.

She's one of two expeditors for CH2MHill Construction that make about four trips a day ferrying materials and people back and forth between Deadhorse and Liberty.

"We're construction. We're here to do the project and when it's done, we're out of here and on to the next one," Rose said.

In her former life, she was a nurse's aide at Providence Hospital for five years. She got her first taste of construction work two summers ago working for Quality Asphalt Paving.

"I really enjoyed being outside and doing physical work, so I started applying for Slope jobs," Rose said.

She's worked on the North Slope for two years. And like the rest of the people here, Rose works more overtime hours in a pay period than she had of regular time when she worked for Providence.

"We work 84 hours a week," Rose said. "And everyone but the 18- to 22-year-olds are in bed by 8 p.m."

CAMPS INCLUDE VARIETY OF AMENITIES

Field operators like ConocoPhillips, BP Alaska and...