A worker last summer was clearing brush near the pipeline when he slipped and felt his leg plunge into a deep, narrow hole. Amazingly, he was uninjured. But Randy Smith, Pipeline Right of Way Manager, recognized that the worker could have easily suffered serious harm because of the open, abandoned Vertical Support Member (VSM) piling that - thanks to dense vegetation - was basically invisible to the eye. 

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Renovations are underway at the Ballast Water Treatment (BWT) Plant at the Valdez Marine Terminal, a $91-million effort to modify the facility for lower ballast flows. It’s one of Alyeska’s largest projects, second only to Strategic Reconfiguration.

Today, there’s less ballast to process, due to lower tanker traffic, and an increase in tankers that separate oil and water. But in older-model tankers, ballast still fills the same compartment that hauls oil, leaving water tainted. BWT cleans the water before returning it to Prince William Sound.     

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When I first arrived at Alyeska, I discussed taking a trip to Rural Alaska with Willie Hensley, who oversees Alyeska’s Federal Government Relations and proudly calls Kotzebue home.

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Laura Meadors describes her life prior to moving to Alaska as a geography lesson. Born outside of Cleveland, Ohio, she’s lived everywhere from Louisiana to California, to Colorado to Florida. Now, she calls Valdez home. As supervisor to the key group of engineers who support the daily operations and maintenance of the Valdez Marine Terminal, she and her team focus on keeping the plant running from a day-to-day standpoint.

Laura is currently working on Alyeska’s Unified Plan project with her self-described fabulous team—Lorena Hegdal, Julia Redington and Jackie Morrison. The project is designed to take a holistic look at safety, risk management and integrity management to ensure that Alyeska achieves set goals in these fields. However, Laura says the plan is not only internal—there’s a major external piece as well. Alyeska wants to look at communication with our regulatory and oversight agencies to increase their confidence in the way we manage our work.

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The controllers on duty at the Operations Control Center (OCC) are accountable for the safe, efficient, effective, and reliable use of all facilities on the 800-mile-long pipeline system. The OCC is the brain-center for pipeline and terminal operations. From here, all the systems required to operate TAPS can be “seen” on monitors and controlled remotely. Pipeline, pump station and Valdez Marine Terminal pressures, flows, tank levels, and hydraulic gradients are all monitored by controllers to ensure pipeline system integrity.

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