Ice-road truckers in Alaska get a lot of attention these days via cable television, but the truth is they’d be grounded without the expertise of unsung companies like Peak Oilfield Service Co. LLC, one of the state’s premier ice-road builders.

“Our core business is oil field support services, and on the North Slope, the majority of that business is heavy-haul trucking and fluids hauling – basically anything that has to do with drilling operations,” says Ryan Soderlund, a project engineer at the Anchorage-based company. “We also do a lot of construction work and facilities maintenance.

“But building ice roads is a big part of our business,” he continues. “We’ve been doing it for more than 25 years.”

Environmental concerns about the ecologically fragile North Slope tundra is the primary reason behind building ice roads, which allow travel

to remote drilling locations otherwise inaccessible during the winter exploration drilling season. Building roads usually starts in December and January, after the tundra frost is deep enough to handle the weight of ice-road construction equipment.

“There’s minimal environmental impact,” Soderlund says. “In April, the roads start to melt, and once they’re gone, there’s little or no evidence that they ever existed.”

COMPLEX PROCESS

During the most recent drilling season, Peak crews built 10 different roads totaling about 50 miles, which is about average. Most ice roads are built atop land because it presents a lower risk to the environment and drivers. A typical road is about 30 feet wide, unless it traverses a waterway; then the width expands to maintain roadbed stability, Soderlund says.

“We try to avoid building over water,” he points out. “For one, if there’s any kind of (oil) spill on a lake or river, we have to get the U.S. Coast Guard involved … it’s a pretty big deal environmentally. So we only do it when we absolutely have to. We try to find the shallowest water possible, and take into account key factors like water flow rate and the width of the body of water.”

The actual road building begins with specialized, low-ground-pressure all-terrain vehicles that spray water to saturate the snow-covered tundra. This creates a solid layer of ice to protect the tundra before heavier equipment is brought in. Additional water is trucked in with Volvo dump trucks – nicknamed “water buffalos” – that are customized to carry 140 barrels of water each.

The water is used to “ice in” the tundra, creating a base layer that’s a couple inches thick – at least high enough to cover plants, Soderlund says.

“We have to make sure there are no pockets of dry snow, which would create a weak spot,” he explains. “There are about 20 different ways to do it, but the end goal is to saturate the ground so it freezes solid. For a mile of road six inches thick, it might require a million gallons of water.”

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Rough terrain requires more water to maintain the minimum 6 inches of ice needed to protect the tundra. Workers draw water from local lakes, but the process is heavily restricted so there is no effect on habitat. Typically, they draw less than 10 percent of a lake’s water, based on state-developed water-volume calculations, and most of the water returns to the lake in the form of spring-melt runoff.

SLOW GOING

Next, Peak brings in heavier equipment – road graders, dump trucks and more water trucks – that dump and spread snow or ice chips. Then crews apply more water and let it freeze; graders smooth out the layers of ice between applications.

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“If we can build a mile a day, we’re moving pretty quickly,” Soderlund says. “At its most basic level, it’s pretty simple, yet it’s complex to figure

out how to not harm tundra, and what equipment to use that won’t damage the tundra.”

Ensuring road-strength is critical because the roads might bear loads weighing up to 2.5 million pounds, in the case of a gargantuan, still-assembled mobile drilling rig on wheels. A typical rig might be 50 feet wide, 70 to 100 feet long and 80 to 100 feet tall, and moves only a couple miles per hour at top speed, he notes.

“Transporting the rigs is another big part of what we do,” Soderlund says. “Once they’re on the truck, it’s not a matter of just driving them down the road. If there are slopes or inclines, sometimes the trucks don’t get enough traction to get the rig up them, so we might have to use chains to hook up Caterpillar D8 bulldozers.”

A rig might need to move only 10 or 15 miles, or 30 miles or more, which can take a few days. Great care is taken when traveling over frozen water; for the largest, heaviest loads, the ice must be “grounded,” or frozen all the way down to the bottom of the body of water. For lighter loads, the required ice thickness depends on what is being hauled.

How does ice-road heavy hauling compare to the ice-road trucking shown on television? Soderlund says he’s only watched one episode of Ice Road Truckers, and says the hauling Peak does is not nearly as dangerous as that portrayed on the show.

“The North Slope is an incredibly safe place to work, more so than any other place where there’s oil field activity,” he says. “We face more and more stringent environmental regulations … which create a zero-incident culture up here. All contractors have to hold themselves to the same safety and environmental standards that the drilling companies face.”

BRUTAL WORK CONDITIONS

North Slope workers toil amid some of the world’s most brutal weather. In Barrow, temperatures can dip to -50 to -70 degrees F, and in the interest of safety, work stops when the temperature gets below -40 degrees, or if visibility goes below a few hundred feet. In emergencies, operations can continue if visibility is 100 feet or less, Soderlund say.

“I’ve personally been in weather where the wind chill was -70 degrees,” he says. “It’s so cold that you try breathing and the condensation from your breath freezes on your face instantly. You can get frostbite in a matter of minutes … you touch a piece of metal bare-handed and it’s all she wrote.”

To stay warm, crew members wear polar-fleece long johns, sweatpants and Carhartt overalls, topped with a heavy-duty down jacket and gloves, and ski masks or full-face Neoprene face masks.

“It’s important to stay hydrated in cold weather, too,” Soderlund says. “When it’s that cold outside, you lose a lot of water from condensation

and breathing.”

All Peak employees go through extensive safety training that covers everything from how to use tools properly to correct procedures for going outside in subzero cold.

“For example, employees can’t go outside without proper traction devices, like ice cleats, that strap onto boots, so you don’t fall,” Soderlund says. “In addition, someone always spots you when you’re backing up a machine or vehicle, or you always use handrails.”

If anyone is injured in any way, it must be reported and the employee must receive medical attention. In addition, the company then performs a cause-analysis study and tries to prevent the incident from ever happening again, through management or engineering safety precautions, he says.

“But the biggest part is employee attitude,” he says. “Safety is built into everything we do – it’s not an afterthought. We want everyone to go

home safely.”

DIVERSITY KEYS GROWTH

Over the years since the company’s inception in 1987, branching out into different service offerings has keyed growth. Today, the company operates five divisions that provide: a range of oil-field support services in Prudhoe Bay; civil and mechanical construction and equipment maintenance services in support of petrochemical companies in the Kenai/Cook Inlet area; tank-cleaning services for oil companies in Valdez; installation and maintenance of AC and DC power systems statewide under the auspices of a wholly owned subsidiary, Palmer-based Precision Power; and civil technology services offered throughout the state, from project management and engineering to logistical support. Peak also provides rig-moving services in North Dakota.

One-stop-shop capabilities and a large fleet of equipment are big selling points.

“Big oil companies find contractors more appealing if they can do all the work,” he continues. “And we’re well positioned to do that with such a large fleet and large amount of expertise. We can do the trucking, the crane support, the equipment maintenance, build the ice roads, and so on.”

Soderlund says the company’s greatest strength is the guys on the ground who’ve developed a wealth of experience. They’re valuable when it comes to solving in-the-field problems that pose unique challenges.

“Every job we do is unique,” Soderlund says. “Sure, we build a lot of ice roads. But the terrain is different every time, and construction requirements change all the time, so building techniques change,

too. And then there’s the weather, which is unpredictable.”

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