AOGA Names Winners of Annual Industry Awards
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In advance of its annual conference in Anchorage at the end of August, the Alaska Oil & Gas Association (AOGA) named the winners of its 2022 Industry Awards. The trade group is giving out four awards recognizing two individuals and two companies for environmental stewardship, safety, and service to the oil and gas industry.
Lifetime Achievement
The Marilyn Crockett Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by Chevron, goes to an executive of Hilcorp Alaska who’s retiring at the end of September. John A. Barnes says he’s looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, fishing on the Kenai, and enjoying the great outdoors.
Barnes has more than forty years in the upstream oil and gas business, mostly in Alaska. After graduating from Colorado School of Mines, Barnes began his career in 1981 as a staff engineer with Marathon Oil Company in Anchorage. He joined Hilcorp Alaska in 2011 as Senior Vice President of Exploration and Production and now serves as the Asset Team Leader for Hilcorp’s Prudhoe Bay East Team.
During his time at Hilcorp, Barnes oversaw two major Cook Inlet basin acquisitions and the takeover of BP’s Milne Point, Endicott, and Northstar assets. Then in 2019, Hilcorp purchased BP’s interest in Prudhoe Bay. While Barnes had been a part of many important exploration, development, and production projects, Prudhoe was his ultimate career calling.
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Barnes has also served on the boards of AOGA, the Resource Development Council, the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, and Grace Christian School.
The Marilyn Crockett Lifetime Achievement Award is named in honor of a former AOGA executive director in recognition of an individual’s devotion of time, effort, thought, and action for the betterment of the oil and gas industry in Alaska.
The Contractor of the Year Award for Safety Performance, sponsored by the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, goes to NANA Management Services (NMS).
With 3,835,159 hours worked in 2021, NMS’ incident rate for total recordable cases was 0.36. In comparison, the national rate for 2021 was 3.2. One of the company’s tools was the “Good Catch and Near Miss Reporting” contest: every time employees report a good catch or near miss safety incident, they enter a drawing for monthly and annual prizes. The contest is so successful that NMS is continuing the program in 2022.
Alyeska Twofer
The bank of the Sagavanirktok River.
SANTHOSH JANARDHANAN LICENSED UNDER CC BY-ND 2.0
The Project of the Year Award for Environmental Stewardship and Innovation, sponsored by law firm Stoel Rives, goes to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company for its Sag River Remediation Project.
Each spring, the Sagavanirktok River swells, surges, and snakes across the landscape as its ice build-up melts or bursts, creating a fast-flowing web of changing waterways. In recent years, the Sag River wiped out sections of the Dalton Highway and stopped critical traffic to and from Deadhorse for days. It also erodes areas of TAPS right of way that Alyeska manages.
Alyeska’s Rivers and Floodplains team leads a group of contractors and other partners to minimize the annual threat and mitigate any damage with earthmoving repairs. In 2021, that essential work was completed with zero accidents, injuries, spills, COVID-19 cases, permit violations, or cost overruns.
AOGA’s fourth annual award goes to a member of Alyeska Pipeline’s communications team. Tara McGrogan is the 2022 winner of the Rising Star Award, which honors a young professional oil and gas industry employee under the age of 35 who has made an immediate and definitive impact.
McGrogan joined Alyeska’s corporate communications team as an intern in May 2016. At the time, she had earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a marketing concentration from UAF. She completed an MBA in 2017 and returned to Alyeska.
As part of Alyeska’s communications team, McGrogan’s role developed and changed, and she was promoted to corporate communications coordinator. She now leads Alyeska’s companywide recognition program, which honors the oil and gas industry’s most innovative and inspiring work. She gives the same efforts in helping lead Alyeska’s United Way campaign in recent years.
The 2022 AOGA Industry Awards were reviewed by a five-person committee made up of industry experts, both active and retired, in the fields of government and public affairs, business, environmental and regulatory affairs, land management, and environmental law.
The awards will be formally presented at AOGA’s annual conference, August 31 through September 1 at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage.
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