Temporary man camps and oilfield shops: mobile facilities adorn the North Slope.

• Author: Sharpe, Margaret
• Position: OIL & GAS

Most oil and gas related structures on the North Slope can technically be called temporary by terms of the lease, since no permanent structures can be placed on the land. Pretty much every building up there is on a temporary foundation and designed to come apart for eventual removal from the lot. The dismantling process will be simply the reverse of how they were pieced together, which is how most arrive on the Slope--in pieces on trucks, barges, or by air.

Once a module gets to Deadhorse, its level of movability defines it as temporary, or relocatable, and directs where and when it is used. Some modules arrive on wheels and keep on rolling (trucked) to destinations throughout the oil patch on the existing road system. Other units are mounted on skids on I-beams (like a runner on a sled) or skis, and those are dragged over snow and ice using dozers or tracked vehicles.

"You can spot a temporary camp just about every two miles," says one operator/driver for MagTec. "All the 'OCs' have them--satellites too." OC means operations center, so just add those two words after Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk, and Base, respectively, and you get PBOC, KOC, and BOC.

Providing Facilities

MagTec Alaska LLC is one of the providers of temporary facilities in Greater Prudhoe Bay; in fact, relocatable units are their specialty. "MagTec is a provider of the rental asset," says Roger Wilson, North Slope operations manager. "Any remote site structure--camps, shops, enviro-vacs [a Slope term for an environmentally friendly bathroom unit], break shacks, office complexes--we provide all types of mobile buildings."

Wilson uses the term "relocatable" instead of "temporary" to emphasize the reusability factor. Camps can be left in place for the next user or shared by multiple users. "At the end of a camp's project timeline, the site is 'blown down' [demobed], brought back to our service center in Deadhorse, and cold stacked [which means stored and out of service] while awaiting a new user. A lot of times, for example, you have a project that doesn't need thirty-five beds. We will try to rent those out to others for you, and they'll bus their people to your camp. For instance, it may be preferable to bus your crew for twenty miles to a site instead of sixty miles. I try to make that option known to many before I pull one of the assets back to Deadhorse. Remarketing to somebody I know in that area can be a win-win for more than one party."

Sometimes no mobilization is needed because an existing camp can be used for other purposes. "These are the same [winter] camps. Not very many camps come back to Deadhorse and get cold stacked," he says...