Anchorage company wins patent for adjustable pipeline support

Two Anchorage inventors have patented something Alaska has needed for a long time: a pipeline support you can raise or lower with a hand crank.

Across Alaska, above-ground pipelines — the trans-Alaska pipeline chief among them — rest on tens of thousands of steel supports driven into frozen ground. But that ground doesn't stay put. As permafrost thaws, it settles and slumps, and the supports shift with it, throwing the pipe out of line. On one stretch of the trans-Alaska line northwest of Fairbanks, thawing ground has already twisted and bent supports badly enough that the operator had to freeze the slope back in place to protect the pipe. Keeping those supports level as the earth moves beneath them is one of the central, unending challenges of running a pipeline in the North.

Adjusting them, as it stands, is a major job. The new patent's own background describes the current reality bluntly: because piles are locked into frozen ground, correcting a support can take "multiple laborers, significant equipment, backup support," and the work is sometimes "so complex they usually require full pipeline shutdowns," a costly step for a line that runs around the clock.

The invention, awarded to North Arrow Enterprises of Anchorage and credited to Bradley Nelson and Brian Daniel Green, aims to make that routine. Two lifting towers stand on a base plate, a beam across the top carries the pipe, and a single drive — a hand crank in one version — turns a jack that, through a connecting axle, raises or lowers both towers together, evenly and at once, from one side — the kind of adjustment that now takes a crew and heavy equipment.

The design is built for real pipeline loads: the patent describes a version rated to lift 50,000 pounds, hold a static load of 70,000, and travel about 30 inches up or down, with forklift channels for moving it and kickstands meant to guard against a sudden drop.

The patent protects the idea, not a deal, so whether it ends up under the trans-Alaska line or any other isn't spelled out. But the problem it targets is growing: as permafrost keeps thawing, the ground under the North's pipelines gets less stable, and keeping those supports level only gets harder.