e serve the North Slope,” says Patricia Yates, quality manager at The Welding Shop, Inc. “We’re the last stop, the furthest north closest to the North Slope. You leave our company shop, and it’s just a short haul to the oil fields.”
The Welding Shop is based in Fox, north of Fairbanks. Its proximity to its primary clientele guarantees steady business when the oil industry is booming. A fully equipped structural welding shop that specializes in heavy-duty fabrications and weldments, The Welding Shop primarily builds structures that support the pipeline, including pipe saddles and anchors, split sleeves, vertical support members, or VSMs, and horizontal support members, or HSMs.
Over the past year The Welding Shop has demonstrated an ability to roll with the changing economic climate. As activity in the oil industry slowed, and thanks to delays in the supply chain, the company has more recently focused on maintenance work and taken on capital and local projects that would normally fall outside of The Welding Shop’s typical work at busier times.
“It’s feast or famine with the [oil] industry,” says Travis Eggleston, who took over as president of The Welding Shop in November 2020 when former president Dan Schok stepped down. “You’re either slammed, or it’s slow. That’s the nature of the beast.”
The Welding Shop was founded in 1979 and incorporated in 2011 when Schok bought the business. Eggleston, employed as an engineer for another Schok-owned business at the time, worked for about a year with Schok to help transition The Welding Shop to its new ownership, before returning to engineering.
Taking over as president last year felt like a natural fit. With more than twenty years of experience working with Alaska’s oil industry, Eggleston has maintained The Welding Shop’s reputation as a local business and employer, employing ten to fifty Alaskans to full time, depending upon the time of year.
“We rarely branch out, even into Anchorage, to find welders, operators, or laborers,” says Eggleston. “We’ve got plenty of qualified people here in Fairbanks, and we go back to those past employees again and again because of their experience and good work ethic.”
“When I call and ask them, they’re very accommodating as far as juggling the production schedule to meet my needs,” Dupre says.
When Hilcorp acquired BP’s assets on the North Slope last year—a deal that included BP’s stake in the trans-Alaska pipeline system—The Welding Shop enjoyed an uptick in business, fabricating structural supports, saddles, HSMs, and VSMs for Hilcorp projects.
The Welding Shop completed several large projects for ConocoPhillips, including the development of the Alpine Field and work on the Greater Mooses Tooth, or GMT-1 and GMT-2 drill sites. For GMT-2, Welding Shop crews fabricated 21 pipe racks, 1,053 VSMs, and 4,820 VSM saddles.
“GMT-1 and GMT-2 were very big projects, not just for us, but for the state itself,” says Eggleston. “Lots of jobs were created from that one.”
The Welding Shop was also heavily involved in development of the ExxonMobil Point Thomson reservoir.
Operating out of a 20,000-square-foot shop, which was doubled in size in 2019, The Welding Shop’s crew operates loaders, a forklift, thirteen 5-ton overhead cranes, pipe benders, and other heavy commercial equipment to manipulate materials into the final product. With this equipment, The Welding Shop can produce structures up to 170 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 14 feet tall inside its shop.
Meanwhile, the computerized numerical control, or CNC, robotic welder housed in a smaller, 5,600-square-foot facility can be programmed to do repetitive welds and is used for high production jobs, like fabricating saddles and anchorage.
A longtime Associated General Contractors of Alaska member, The Welding Shop has relied on AGC to connect with other qualified contractors. “AGC has a good track record and the members are a good bunch,” says Eggleston. “I’m happy to be a part of that.”