people from having problems.” In other words: spilling. “The fueler is stationary in the tank truck, and users drive up,” Swart says. “Anybody that pulls up on the pad that needs fuel simply goes over to the tank truck. The fueler sees them coming, and he gets out and puts his portable containment down [called ‘duck ponds’], and fueling takes place right there at the spot.” Duck ponds are square-shaped geomembranes that capture any spills, overflow, or drips that might occur during fuel transfer. Colville and NOSI also fuel the non-mobile equipment—such as light plants, generators, and heaters—usually twice a day to make sure they don’t run out. “We have satellite tanks and a lot of other vendors do too,” Swart says. “All those tanks need refueled—for our service trucks, loader, whatever—we have tanks on site. We are on a schedule with them, but if we run out, we call them and they come and deliver.” “There’s a big supply chain and logistics challenge in making sure you have fuel when it is needed,” Osborne says. “With Slope operations, it really comes down to having storage ability because everything is crammed into a threemonth timeframe when the ice roads are around.” Remote sites, like Alpine, are fly-in-only access during the summer; so during the winter months, after the ice roads are built, all the heavy hauls take place and the facility is restocked. A site like that has big tankage in order to run during the summer or the shoulder season, when ice is either forming in the fall/winter or breaking in the spring/summer. So getting fuel from Nikiski or Valdez, offloading to Fairbanks, then from Fairbanks into trucks, and trucked to Deadhorse is a well-orchestrated process. “This past season demand was so high, we couldn’t get it from Fairbanks to Deadhorse quick enough. You don’t want to run out of fuel up there because that halts everything. That’s really the last thing your customers want, or operations wants. If you are out of fuel, you are not operating.”
Cook Inlet and the Kenai Looking southward, the fueling process that keeps exploration in Cook Inlet and Kenai running is a system of shared services. Access to and easier www.akbizmag.com
September 2014 | Alaska Business Monthly
143