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sels, and will meet the (pending) pro- posed safety rules of Subchapter “M” for new towing vessels.

Foss: Looking Up and

Heading North

Lauer said the Arctic business cli- mate is favorable. “Foss is bullish on opportunities in the immediate and long term with regard to resource ex- traction of oil and gas, mining and minerals. Precious and industrial met- als and rare minerals are mined in the

Arctic. These are areas in which we pro- vide marine support.” He added that the company makes decisions based on the long haul. “If it’s an oil project, we might work on it for 15 years before the specifi c oil fi eld comes into pro- duction. The near-term outlook for oil prices doesn’t necessarily correlate with our current level of activity.”

In recent years, Foss has expanded its project work to Arctic, particularly

Alaskan, oilfi eld services. Last sum- mer, the company dedicated four tugs and two barges to delivering oilfi eld modules to a development project near Point Thomson, 60 miles east of

Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. An estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas re- serves exist at Point Thomson, along with lesser quantities of a natural gas liquid called condensate. Pools of oil lie near that fi eld. ExxonMobil is the owner and operator of the larg- est share in Point Thomson, BP is a signifi cant owner and ConocoPhillips has a smaller stake.

Foss vessels have worked with Spar- tan Offshore in its search for oil in

Cook Inlet, and the company’s Ma- rine Transportation Division assisted

Shell Oil in exploratory drilling in the

Arctic. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, howev- er, said last February it wouldn’t drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic seas in 2013, following setbacks in 2012. Shell sent its two Arctic offshore rigs to Asia for repairs and upgrades last year. Arctic oil nonetheless remains appealing, particularly given political unease and safety concerns in many other pro- ducing regions.

Separately, and since 1990, Foss has transported tens of millions of tons of concentrated ore for Red Dog Mine, one of world’s largest zinc concentrate producers, located 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Foss developed self-loading barges to transfer that ore to bulk carriers from a shallow-draft port. The mine operates under an agreement between the NANA Re- gional Corp., Inc., a Native company owned by the Inupiat people, and

Teck Alaska Inc., a subsidiary of Teck

Resources Limited in Canada.

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