Smaller Players in the Big Oil Game: Little roles have major results in the oil fields.

• Author: Kay, Alexandra
• Position: OIL & GAS

Everyone in Alaska knows the big players in the oil patch: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips,

Hilcorp, and potentially soon (again) Shell. They are responsible for petroleum production that returned $3.1 billion in state and local taxes and royalties in fiscal year 2019. Counting those dollars spent from public coffers, in addition to the industry's direct spending, the oil industry drives about half of Alaska's overall economy, according to the Resource Development Council. The sector also accounts for one-quarter of Alaska's jobs--but not by those major players alone. They have help.

In the shadow of the giants, smaller operators with less familiar names carve out their pieces of the pie. They form a parallel industry: oil field support. These companies provide environmental services, management, engineering, contracting, and supplies. They would not be in Alaska without the major companies, yet the multinationals would not be able to function without their relatively Lilliputian assistants. Often locally owned, support companies draw on very specific expertise, allowing the big companies to focus on what they do best.

Chill Out

"We manufacture passive refrigeration devices that are used to keep the ground frozen up north," says Edward Yarmak, president and chief engineer of Arctic Foundations, Inc. (AFI). But isn't the North Slope permanently frozen? Indeed, oil and gas wells are drilled through permafrost as much as a quartermile thick, but the action of drilling, and later the extraction of oil or gas, creates heat. "You can imagine that hot oil coming up through permafrost is something that's going to thaw things out," Yarmak says. Softened earth can collapse around wells or underneath pipelines or buildings. That's where AFI comes in.

AFI makes thermoprobes, which are two-phase thermosyphons that provide passive refrigeration to either create or maintain permafrost. These thermoprobes allow for the construction of heated structures on permafrost without the ground settling, and they also allow oil drilling without well collapse.

The devices consist of a vertical pipe or tube that goes down some depth into the ground with a portion of the vessel above ground. The tube is filled with a working fluid; AFI usually uses carbon dioxide. When the outside is cold, the vapor condenses on the interior of the cooled part of the tube, releasing heat, which then causes the pressure on the inside of the vessel to drop, resulting in the liquid absorbing...