Above: Deadhorse St. Regis Hotel (heh heh). For a small room with a shower in which you can barely turn around, the nightly cost is $250.00. The hotel is a modular building that sits on a gravel pad placed on the tundra. Yesterday afternoon, riding the final 40 miles in temperatures below 40 degrees, I was glad to go into the hotel to warm up. I would have been happy in a shack as long as it were warm. Hearty cafeteria style dinners cost $20.00... breakfast, between 4:00 AM and 7:00 AM only, $15.00. No alcohol is sold in Deadhorse or Prudhoe Bay. Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay are strategic work sites of critical national importance. The oil companies set the rules, use their own security firms, and don't tolerate any monkey business.
Jim and I were the first of our group to arrive in Deadhorse, Jim several minutes ahead of me. Jim took a nap and later joined me in the cafeteria for coffee and we watched the second half of one of the Laker/Celtic playoff games on a very large flat screen TV. Take a look in the above image at the satellite receiver on the side of the hotel. The satellites broadcasting television are in the southern ski for us in the lower 48. The satellites are a lot lower in the southern sky, therefore, for anyone using a satellite signal above the Arctic Circle... hence the flat angle of the satellite receiver on the hotel.
I talked a bit to the hotel manager. He managed the hotel for six months of the year and spent the remaining six months in South Dakota. He is replaced by a manager who takes the "winter shift." The manger reported that the hotel was owned by an Alaskan Indian tribe... and, that business was down as BP had shunted much of its work force to the Gulf of Mexico.
Above: Representative Deadhorse scene. The meltwater on the tundra has no place to go with permafrost ice only a foot below the surface. Gravel pads and roads are constructed to provide a solid surface for Deadhorse outbuildings and vehicles. Deadhorse is a company town outside of Prudhoe Bay proper. The Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay operation is powered by a fully integrated power plant which uses on site sourced natural gas.
Above: Arctic ready vehicles in Deadhorse. Most locations in Deadhorse look more or less like this. Industrial building with equipment on a gravel pad.
Above: Transport plane and chopper in Deadhorse.
Above: Rolladon in Deadhorse. Specialized vehicle with large, low pressure (five pounds) tires to minimize damage to the soft spring/summer tundra surface.
Above: Looking along a bay of the Arctic ocean, one of 20 or so Prudhoe Bay oil well complexes. We took a hotel organized tour bus and guide to Prudhoe Bay. The tour started at 7:00 AM and was led by Brandon, a member of one of the Eskimo tribes. All tour members had had their identification sent to the security authorities at Prudhoe Bay weeks before the tour for security clearance. The tour bus passed into Prudhoe Bay through a manned security gate after leaving Deadhorse.
Today's drilling technology allows drilling to operate from relatively small pads while drilling arms can reach out laterally, under ground, in several directions, as far as eight miles. The north slope caribou often walk on the tundra between the drilling pads. Between Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, our group noted a herd of 10 or 12 musk ox (too far away for a decent image from my 3x telephoto lens).
Prudhoe Bay's wells once sent over 2 million barrels a day through the Alaska Pipeline. Today, the pipeline carries 700,000 barrels a day. Brandon said that current known reserves at Prudhoe Bay are thirteen billion barrels. That suggests that unless other oil is found in the area, at current flow rates the pipeline has another 20 years of usefulness.
Workers come to Prudhoe Bay for two week stints. On two... off two. They are flown by the oil companies back and forth between Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay. An oil worker can make over $100,000 a year working in this way. While in the oil field, he/she has room and board paid by the employer. During max production times, workers may "hot sheet." That is, after a worker leaves his bed for his 12 hour shift, another worker, returning from his shift, jumps in the still warm bed to sleep the next 12 hours. The bed is always in use.
The scope and complexity of Prudhoe Bay, and the Alaska Pipeline, and the conditions in which the operation takes place, are testament to the energies and efforts of highly capable people and organizations. Mistakes are made in this fallible world. Voire: the ongoing spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But as long as we vilify the "evil" oil companies for a costly error in deep water drilling, let's remember that it is we, through our government representatives, who have limited drilling in waters surrounding the lower 48 (not 55) to obviously operationally complex deep water locations, when numerous alternative oil sources, closer to shore, (such as is the case in Prudhoe Bay), were held off limits. We have met the enemy and the enemy is us... not BP alone. No one's best interest is served by piling excessively on BP.
Above: The first Prudhoe Bay wells. A finished well above ground is seen as a "Christmas Tree." That is the name for the above ground metal apparatus composed of intertwined pipes, valves, and joints used to channel the oil coming from the ground. Because Prudhoe Bay is so cold in winter... nighttime temperatures can average 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit... the small buildings, as seen in the image, keep the "Christmas Trees" and the workers protected from the elements.
Above: Mwah (sic) and the Arctic Ocean! Brandon says that polar bears have been sighted where I am standing now. Brandon informed that by this time of the year the Arctic Ocean is usually ice free. As can be seen from the image, there is still plenty of ice in the bay. Water freezes at 32 degrees F. Salt water freezes at about 28 degrees F. The Arctic Ocean is frozen solid for about 8 months of the year at Prudhoe Bay. But, even if the ocean were not frozen, the harbors are too shallow to allow for a port. Periodically, in late summer, barges will be used to offload goods from ocean going vessels destined for Prudhoe Bay. But, port potential is limited, hence, the need for the year around haul road... in wither, The Ice Road (that sounds cooler, doesn't it?... heh heh... sorry).
Standing here it was about 34 degrees F with a 20 mph wind. Pretty brisk factoring in the wind chill. Twenty miles further up the north slope the temperature will increase. At the northern edge of the Brooks Range, summer temperatures average 20 degrees higher than at Prudhoe Bay.
Some of the members of our group took off their shoes and socks and walked in the Arctic Ocean.
