Now a tanker arrives about once a month and delivers the oil a few miles away at Nikiski, where it accounts for about one-fourth of the crude refined there by Tesoro.
Or did.
Since March 23, when workers hastily retreated as a gush of cement-like mud and water boiled down from Redoubt's flanks, Drift River oil terminal has ceased normal operations.
At the time of the eruption, more than 6 million gallons of crude were stored there, but a dike built in 1990 held back the flood from the tanks. Since then, workers returned to drain off more than half the oil, but 2.5 million gallons of sludge and oil remain, with more in pipelines connecting it to tanks and processing facilities at Trading Bay and Granite Point to the north.
With no place to put oil, the 10 platforms on the west side of Cook Inlet have shut down, with an economic loss of millions of dollars in unproduced oil, uncollected taxes, reduced contractor services and possible layoffs.
Francis, the Coast Guard spokeswoman, said it could be months before Drift River reopens. The airstrip, outside the dikes, was inundated with mud and clearing it alone will take about 20 working days. The tanks will have to be drained and scrubbed before they can be used again, a process that normally takes four months, she said. Engineers are also thinking of raising the dike, which is up to 25 feet tall; while it held against the floods, some mud splashed over the top.
And Redoubt is still capable of exploding unpredictably over the next months.
"They're not focusing on moving oil," Francis said. "They're focusing on removing the (stored oil) while it continues to be in the shadow of an erupting volcano."
LONG-ACTIVE VOLCANO
That Redoubt is an active volcano should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Capt. James Cook, for whom the Inlet is named, noticed "white smoke but no fire" coming from Redoubt in 1778. Over the course of written history, geologists say it is the second-most active of Cook Inlet's four active volcanoes.
In 1966, even as Drift River was being considered as the site for the oil terminal, a 22-man survey crew camping at the lower river there had to be hastily evacuated when an explosion melted part of the Drift Glacier and sent a flood of mud downstream. The crew reported that the river rose four feet in 15 minutes and carried ice chunks the size of a D-7 Caterpillar bulldozer, according to an account published in the Daily News on Jan. 26, 1966.
The volcano produced six explosions between Jan. 24 and Feb. 20, 1966, and five more from Dec. 7, 1967, to April 28, 1968. Then the eruption ended and it quieted for two decades.
The first time that Chris Nye wondered why Drift Terminal was built beneath a volcano was as an undergraduate geology student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the 1970s. Nye, now a state geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, saw a film in class that was made during construction of the terminal.
Nye recalls the film showing workers operating heavy equipment suddenly brought to a halt by an eruption of Redoubt and a huge flood. When the waters subside, the crew goes back to work.
"Engineers, they probably had the expectation that when the terminal was put in, it had a lifespan of maybe 30 years or so," said Banks, the state oil and gas director. "In a 30-year period it would appear to be very unlikely that the volcano would blow up. It just happens to have done it twice in 40 years."
Redoubt exploded at 9:47 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1989. It exploded 22 more times until it began to quiet in late April 1990.
More than 37 million gallons of crude was in storage at Drift River at the time -- three times the amount of oil spilled from the tanker Exxon Valdez in early 1989. The Drift River shifted from one channel and into another, demonstrating how unpredictable it can be. Mudflows inundated the tank farm, but the tanks didn't leak.
The terminal closed and oil production halted in Cook Inlet. In response, Cook Inlet Pipe Line Co. built a concrete- armored dike around the facility. Construction of the nearly two-mile wall began April 9, 1990, and concluded that August.
Art Wettanen, a heavy equipment operator in Talkeetna, was among the first construction workers at the site. His first job was to bulldoze a trail through from the airstrip to the beach through the mud.
"It was treacherous coming and going," he recalled in an interview last week. "I started digging a trench, slinging it both ways. I was sinking to top of the tracks" of the bulldozer.
"In that volcanic ash, there were a lot of equipment breakdowns," he said. "Everyone wore rubber boots, like the fishermen. It was so sticky, if you sunk into it level with the tops of your toes and you stood there long enough, it was like quicksand. It would take your boots right off. It was horrible."
At the tank farm, the high-water level was about 25 feet up the sides of the tanks, Wettanen said.
