Keeping Alaska Fueled

Alaska Business Monthly, August, 2001 by Roger Kane

Tesoro's biggest refinery is in Anacortes, Wash., on March's Point of Puget Sound. The facility is 70 miles north of Seattle, employs roughly 300 employees and can process 108,000 barrels of crude daily. About 85 percent of the petroleum refined is turned into gasoline.

The Kapolei, Hawaii, refinery employs 240 people and has a rated crude capacity of 95,000 barrels per day. Primary products include jet and marine fuels, gasoline, light naphtha and diesel.

Its Kenai refinery can handle 72,000 barrels a day, but averages about 50,000 barrels a day. Of the refined jet fuel that the Kenai plant produces, roughly 37,000 gallons travel through the Tesoro Alaska Pipeline from Kenai, through the Cook Inlet to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Last year, Tesoro chalked up revenues of more than $5 billion. The company's assets total about $1.5 billion.

Earlier this year, Tesoro boasted 280 established retail locations spread throughout Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Sixty three of those stations are Tesoro owned and many feature 2 Go Tesoro convenience stores.

Tesoro's Mirastar brand fueling stations serve Wal-Mart stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

While Tesoro is established in Alaska and is a retail fixture on the West Coast, it also serves the commercial air and marine industries. Tesoro's jet and marine fuels help make trans-Pacific and trans-polar transportation possible and help link Asia, North America and Europe.

Bulk fuel terminals in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, California, Hawaii and Washington serve commercial, shipping and industrial customers.

Williams

Williams' Alaska operations are kept running by roughly 500 employees. One hundred fifty of those workers staff the company's North Pole refinery.

The company makes a significant contribution to the Alaska economy and last year spent about $820 million in Alaska, said Jeff Cook, Williams Alaska vice president of external affairs. He said spending in 2001 should be on a par with last year's expenditures.

Williams purchases a significant amount of its crude oil requirements from the State of Alaska. Last year the company sold 20.8 million barrels of refined product consisting of jet fuel, gasoline, diesel and specialty fuels.

"Our vision is to be the leading provider of energy-related products in Alaska," Cook said.

Williams has been in Alaska since the 1970s and acquired its North Pole refinery, which was built in 1977, from MAPCO in 1998. Williams has continued to grow its Alaska operations and the acquisition of Mapco in 1998 brought refining assets, natural gas liquids pipelines and gasoline retail outlets into the Williams fold.

The company owns 28 convenience stores in Alaska and products terminals at the Port of Anchorage and at the Fairbanks Internalional Airport

In the last 90 years, Williams has grown into a multi-billion-dollar energy company. Williams traces its roots to 1908 with two brothers' construction projects in Fort Smith, Ark.