Oil Rigging and Labor in Alameda, California Archive of 37 Large Format photographs 1970s-80s

Oil Rigging

Photograph

Rigging International photographs of refinery vessels, crawler transporters, port cranes, and module lifts place oil-industry labor at the center of the late 1970s and early 1980s energy buildout. Captions in the group name offloading modules at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, moving a 420 ton nuclear vessel from Oceanside to San Onofre, erecting refinery vessels at Come-By-Chance, Newfoundland, offloading a 550 ton refinery vacuum tower in Aruba, and handling 130 ton bulk-loader cranes at Cherry Point, Ferndale, Washington. The archive is best dated to roughly the late 1970s and early 1980s from its overlap with San Onofre Units 2 and 3 after the Atomic Energy Commission issued construction permits in 1973 and with Prudhoe Bay work after the Trans-Alaska Pipeline began operating in 1977; Rigging International later identified Alameda, California, as its world headquarters.

Rigging International. Archive of 34 large format photographs. Circa late 1970s to early 1980s, Alameda, California, with projects in California, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Newfoundland, Aruba, and Sweden. Each 8" x 10", predominantly color with a few black-and-white prints. Captions identify specialized heavy-lift and transport work in refinery construction, marine offloading, nuclear-component hauling, port-crane erection, maintenance, and machinery installation, with recurring references to crawler transporters, barge operations, lifting frames, and oversized refinery vessels. Specific projects documented in the visible prints include Come-By-Chance refinery work in Newfoundland; San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station transport; Hanford reactor hauling; Prudhoe Bay module offloading; the Port of Oakland and Port of San Francisco; the Hawaiian Independent Refinery; Spreckels sugar refinery in Salinas; Cherry Point bulk-loader crane installation near Ferndale; and the Total concrete jacket construction site at Stord, Norway.

Labor shown in this archive document the transport, lifting, erection, and maintenance work required to make energy production function across refineries, ports, and offshore supply systems. The North Slope photographs belong to the years after the Trans-Alaska Pipeline opened Prudhoe Bay to sustained high-volume production, while the refinery and marine-lift photographs align with a broader period in which energy companies expanded output through new modules, replacement vessels, piping additions, and upgraded handling systems rather than through constant construction of entirely new refineries. Alameda, Oakland, San Francisco, Ferndale, Aruba, Newfoundland, and Hawaii appear here as linked points in that industrial geography, joined by the labor of crews moving vacuum towers, reactors, cranes, and process equipment too large for ordinary transport. Light handling wear, scattered edge wear, minor curling, and a few corner bends visible across the prints; overall good condition. A record of the heavy-lift labor that built and maintained oil and industrial infrastructure during the post-1973 energy expansion.

Item #23351

Price: $550.00