Alyeska Upgrades Pipeline Pump Stations
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. is moving into full gear with Its $250 million project to modernize and upgrade pump stations along the trans-Alaska pipeline.
When complete in mid-2006 the pipeline will be able to economically transport reduced flows of crude down to 300,000 barrels a day, according to Ian Livett, Alyeska’s manager in charge of the project.
Alternatively, if new discoveries are made, the pipeline will be able to gear up to efficiently transport as much as 1.5 million barrels a day, Livett told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance on May 12.
“It’s important that we reduce the cost of shipping North Slope crude oil, so that we can remain competitive in world markets. This project is a key part of that strategy,” Livett told the Alliance.
By allowing the pipeline to ship lower volumes of oil and still be economic, the operating life of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System will be extended, Livett said.
The pipeline pump station reconfiguration is expected to reduce Alyeska’s costs of moving oil through the pipeline by about 10 percent, according to Alyeska spokesman Mike Heatwole.
In the 1980s when the North Slope oil fields were producing at full throttle, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System moved more than 2 million barrels per day. Production has now declined to less than half of that.
Livett told the Alliance that the project to modernize pump stations involves electrification and automation of four pump stations, the conversion of a fifth to a relief station, and centralization of major maintenance bases at Prudhoe Bay, Fairbanks and Valdez.
New electric pumps will pump crude oil much more efficiently than 27-year-old pumps now used at the pump stations, and automation will allow the pipeline to be operated remotely, from a central control facility that will be in Anchorage.
Ninety percent of the engineering on the project is now complete, and all of the major equipment purchases – such as turbines, pumps, generation and electrical equipment – have been done, Livett said. Contracts to fabricate facilities have been awarded, the bulk of them to Alaska firms.
Pump stations 1, 2, 4 and 9 essentially are being replaced, with new facilities being built adjacent to existing, older facilities. When the work is complete, the old pump stations will be taken out of service and removed.
The project has been in the planning stages for two years and is now in construction. Preparation work on some pump stations was done last year but the bulk of the site work will occur in 2005.
The pipeline is scheduled for a short maintenance shutdown in June or July and while that is being accomplished some of the tie- in work on the new facilities at pump stations 4 and 9 will be done.
Meanwhile, fabrication plants in Anchorage that are operated by Veco Alaska Inc. and Arctic Slope Energy Services are now busy building 56 truckable modules for the project, or modules small enough to be transported by semitrucks. Fabrication work for tanks and steel skids has been parceled out to other Alaska vendors in Anchorage and Fairbanks.
The modules will be moved to the pump stations late this summer. Five building units are being built on site at three pump stations. They are power generation units, with heavy turbines.
All of the new buildings constructed at the pump stations will sit five feet above the ground on pilings to reduce snow removal problems and the need to refrigerate soils at sites where there is permafrost. This requires about 1,000 steel plies to be installed, about 200 to 250 at each of the four pump stations.
Power will be generated on site at all of the pump stations except Pump Station 1 at Prudhoe Bay, which is being tied in with the main oil field power station for the first time, and Pump Station 9, which will buy power from Golden Valley Electric Association.
Copyright Morris Communications May 22, 2005