Building Drill Rigs for

the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline

In the mid-70s, Peterson designed and built complete under-carriage and propulsion systems for six drill rigs built by Raymond International.  The rigs were constructed to drill vertical supports for the Alaskan Pipeline project which extended from Valdez Bay to the North Slope, 480 miles long. The entire nine-contract project was handled by Aleyska, a firm set up specifically for the 11-year, $10 billion task. Besides the undercarriage assemblies and track frames, Peterson also supplied the hydraulics, power pack engines (CAT 1673s), and did much of the fabrication work for Raymond at their yard in Oakland.

Raymond built the carbody and superstructure for each drill rig. Peterson built 12 complete track frames and walking beams, made with special 48-inch wide track shoes, using non-current D8 rails. It took two-and-a-half tractors worth of undercarriage parts from old D8, 15A tractors to build each unit. When complete, each drill rig weighed 232,000 lbs.

20 years later, Peterson was fortunate enough to hire Raymond's former Alaska Pipeline project manager, Bud Collins, who as an ace engineer, nows designs custom machines for Peterson.

         Photo from H.C. Price - major contractor on Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Trans-Alaskan Pipeline Summary

Pipeline construction began in March 1975 and was finished in June 1977. Crude oil began flowing in the pipeline on June 20, 1977 and the first tanker filled with North Slope crude oil left Valdez on August 1, 1977.

The 48-inch diameter steel pipeline runs 800 miles and crosses three mountain ranges and over 800 rivers or streams. Moving "hot" oil across the permafrost rich soil of Alaska presented a special challenge to pipeline designers. Typical pipeline construction at the time involved burying most pipelines, but because of the permafrost through most of Alaska, large segments of the trans-Alaska pipeline were elevated above ground to keep the permafrost from melting. About half of the 800 mile pipeline is buried in a conventional manner.

More than 14 billion barrels (nearly 550 billion gallons) have moved through the Trans Alaska Pipeline System since start up in 1977. The volume of oil flowing through the pipeline has decreased from a peak of 2.1 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 1988 to about 1 mbpd in 2001.

RELATED STORIES:

* SOHIO- Alaska Pipeline Project

                 Photo from H.C. Price - contractor