A diesel spill along the Yukon raises fears about Hilcorp’s drilling program

No one is saying whether the truck that spilled 1,000 gallons of fuel had been on a Hilcorp job. But it belongs to a company that’s worked for Hilcorp on its Yukon Flats exploration program.

A 1,000-gallon diesel spill earlier this month near the Yukon River has prompted renewed objections to plans by a privately held oil company to drill in the region later this year.

The truck was operated not by Hilcorp, the oil company, but by Brice Inc., a Native-owned construction firm that has worked with Hilcorp on its preparations for the summer drilling efforts in the remote Yukon Flats basin, north of Fairbanks.

Hilcorp is staging equipment for the drilling program at the Yukon River Camp, where the Dalton Highway, which connects urban Alaska to the North Slope oil fields, crosses the Yukon River. Once the ice on the river clears, the equipment will be barged up the Yukon toward drill sites.

Thom Leonard, a spokesman for Brice’s parent company, Calista, said Brice’s truck was “between jobs” when the spill occurred earlier this month at a parking lot at the camp, which is run by a Fairbanks-based tourism business on federal land.

The lot is typically used for “multi-day barging storage,” according to a post-spill report from Brice to regulators at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, known as DEC.

There’s no indication that the fuel reached the Yukon itself, according to documents released by DEC.

But critics of the drilling effort say the spill still serves as an example of the type of incidents that can happen during industrial operations like oil exploration.

The spill left some 600 gallons of pooled fuel in the parking lot that had to be vacuumed up by another truck. A video of the site obtained by Northern Journal showed workers walking through an ankle-deep pool that one of them described as diesel.

“We were told over and over again that we were overhyping the danger, we were alarmist, and that everything they were doing is perfectly safe,” Rhonda Pitka, the chief of the tribal government in the Yukon River village of Beaver, said in a phone interview. “It’s so disappointing.”

Oil companies often hire contractors to perform specialized tasks, and Brice affiliates have worked for Hilcorp in the past.

Leonard, the spokesman for Brice’s parent company, would not say whether the truck had originally been in the area supporting Hilcorp, adding that “we don’t typically comment on clients we serve.” A Hilcorp spokesman also declined to comment.

But an online update last month from Doyon Ltd., the regional Native corporation that owns land in the Yukon Flats where the oil drilling will take place, noted that a crew from Brice was doing debris clearing for Hilcorp’s exploration program.

A Doyon official said the company is aware of a situation that was reported to DEC but referred questions to Hilcorp as the “appropriate point of contact.”

Hilcorp’s search for oil in the Yukon Flats has support from Doyon and tribal leadersin Birch Creek, the Native village closest to where the summer drilling will take place. Other tribal leaders along the river and in Alaska’s Interior have harshly criticized the exploration campaign, saying that its potential risks are incompatible with the region’s salmon-dependent Native communities.

While the spill took place April 6, according to documents released by DEC, drilling opponents only learned about it in recent days through word of mouth, according to Pitka. She described the incident as “exactly what we were afraid of.”

Opponents of the drilling program point to Hilcorp’s history in Alaska: The company, which traditionally has acquired and operated aging oil and gas infrastructure, has been fined for numerous incidents, and regulators have pointed to a “track record of regulatory noncompliance.”

A DEC official involved in the spill response, Terra Meares, described Brice as the “responsible party” for the spill and said that the purpose of the company’s equipment at the Yukon camp is beyond her agency’s jurisdiction.

Decisions about potential penalties or enforcement actions, she added, would be made at higher levels of DEC. The director of the department’s spill prevention and response division was out of the office this week and unavailable for comment.

The truck was originally left at the parking lot April 4, “with no indication of leaks or issues,” according to Brice’s report to DEC. The spill was discovered early in the morning of April 6 by a camp resident who was watching the northern lights and saw or smelled fuel.

The truck’s tank holds 3,000 gallons, and the 600 gallons of “pooled fuel” were ultimately vacuumed up from snow- and ice-covered ground by another truck that was dispatched to the site, according to documents released by DEC. An excavator subsequently arrived at the site to remove thicker layers of contaminated ice, according to the documents.

Leonard, with Brice’s parent company, said the businesses “always strive to respect the environment.”

“We are Alaskans,” Leonard said in an email. “It pains us when incidents like this occur, although we are proud our team members took immediate action and followed all regulatory requirements.”

This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Nathaniel Herz. You can subscribe by clicking on this link.