Williams Alaska Petroleum Inc.'s North Pole refinery outside Fairbanks in North Pole, Alas., recently celebrated its 25-year anniversary.
Bob Hook, operations manager, has been at the refinery since its inception.
"We truly started out as a grassroots refinery in August 1977," said Hook during a recent trip to Houston. "The vision for it was to utilize the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) to provide heating oil to the people of the interior of Alaska, Fairbanks in particular. And from that thought process and that risk-taking has grown this wonderful service that we now have."
The original entity was known as North Pole Refining, a division of Earth Resources Co. of Alaska, and employed 35 people. Mid-America Pipeline Co., Tulsa, acquired the refinery in 1981. Now owned by Williams Alaska, it is the largest refinery in Alaska, with more than 150 employees.
"When we started taking crude in from TAPS, everybody was so excitedUbecause we finally got to see crude flow through the state of Alaska, and to also get a sample of it. People were whooping and hollering. There was a lot of excitement. The initial design was for 25,000 b/d. When we finally got into production, and we reached 12,000 b/d, 50% of capacity, we thought we were really going then. And it's been one continuous growth for us ever since."
Williams Alaska's North Pole refinery doesn't have an FCC, isomerization, or platforming unit. Theirs is a unique opportunity in that they don't have to process the entire range of the barrel. The refinery returns what it doesn't use back into the pipeline and is one of few refineries in the world to have that option.
Gasoline is not the primary product. The 635,000 people living in Alaska collectively use about 14,000 b/d of gasoline. The majority of the yield, at times 60%, is jet fuel for delivery to airlines and to the US military.
Lessons learned
The remoteness and harsh climate of the refinery locale provided opportunities for lessons in improvisation and preparedness.
"We were a grassroots refinery in the interior of Alaska. There was no infrastructure to support us, and we were at the end of the supply line," he said.
On Oct. 19, 1977, the refinery experienced a fire due to a pump seal failure. The damage was minor, but lost electrical components were critical to the operation. The refinery was forced to shut down due to a lack of replacement components.
"I learned a couple of things while racing back to the refinery that night. One was that you can put a Chevy Blazer into four-wheel drive above 50 miles an hour. The other was to keep a good stock of spare parts on hand." The refinery was back online by Dec. 24.
Extreme cold was another challenge for the refinery. Flow transmitters and pressure transmitter instruments, normally ASTM-tested at –40° F., had to withstand North Pole operations at –60° F.
"We started out with a steam heat trace system, as an auxiliary heat source, to keep things thawed out, and we froze that up right off," explained Hook. "Then we switched to a propylene glycol circulating system. It's what we still use today."
Employees also had to deal with personal hardships associated with living in a remote location. New households discovered they had almost a yearlong wait for telephone service.
"We'd all get together on Sunday nights, and we used to go to what was called the Trading Post of North Pole. We'd line up, all parked in our cars, which were running to keep warm, and you'd wait your turn to use the pay phone to call the Lower 48."
A third crude unit was added in 1998 at a cost of $70 million.
In August, the refinery ran at its record capacity with 220,000 b/d crude throughput and 74,000 b/d product retention.
The refinery has also set records in safety and is a recognized leader in that area with its behavior-based safety protocols.
People factor
Hook credits the success of the refinery to the spirit and teamwork of its employees who created and now manage the organization.
But there's a bigger success story: North Pole is a small community where people work together, on and off the job, to overcome challenges and to cooperate with one another in a beautiful, yet hostile subarctic environment.
