ASRC's business activities cover a wide range, from support and technical services for the petroleum industry, to fuels refining, civil engineering, government services contracting, finance and more.

The corporation also owns five million acres of land on the North Slope, much of it prospective for oil and gas, and owns part of the mineral rights under the Alpine oil field.

ASRC now receives royalties from oil production from Alpine and shares 70 percent of those with other Alaska Native regional and village corporations under a requirement of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Mainly, this is a result of low levels of activity in the state's oil and gas industry, where ASRC Energy Services, the corporation's oil and gas services subsidiary, is heavily engaged. ASRC Energy Services contributes about half of the parent corporation's gross revenues.

However, if a long-planned natural gas pipeline project moves ahead, ASRC Energy Services is well positioned to play a part in the project, according to its president, Mike Stophlet.

"We've working hard to develop a reputation for efficiency and quality with our customers," Stophlet said. This should pay off if the gas project develops, he said.

ASRC Energy builds and maintains pipelines and oil facilities and provides technical services to the oil and gas industry.

"Our earnings from petroleum services are a little down," Bagne said. "While we're hopeful about the future, there is no new pipeline work on the slope this winter. We've compensated by becoming more active out of state."

ASRC Energy Services has operations on the U.S. Gulf Coast and Canada as well as in the Russian Far East. Also, ASCG Inc., the Barrow corporation's civil engineering group, showed 30 percent growth in revenues last year, much of it for work outside Alaska.

Overall revenues for ASRC were a little up in 2003 compared with 2002, nudging past $1 billion, Bagne said. But the net profit will be a little down from the previous year, he said.

Final figures for revenues and profit for 2003 have not yet been released by the corporation. The 2002 net profit was $16.8 million.

ASRC is one of Alaska's major employers. Worldwide, the corporation and its subsidiaries employ about 6,500 people, with over half of these, about 3,500 people, in Alaska, Bagne said

Besides new opportunities with a natural gas project, government contract services are a new growth area for ASRC, Bagne said.

A new company, ASRC Federal Holding Co., based in Greenbelt, Md., has been formed to pursue government contracts, taking advantage of an 8-A minority contractor status, which grants preferred treatment under federal contracting procedures.

ASRC Federal Holding Co. has landed a NASA support contract. ASRC has also provided support services for the nation's strategic petroleum reserve through another division, Bagne said.

Sales by the refining and fuels subsidiary of ASRC, PetroStar Inc., have been stable in the last two years.

PetroStar operates two small refineries, one in North Pole near Fairbanks and a second in Valdez, providing jet and marine fuel, diesel fuel and home heating oil to customers in Interior and coastal regions of the state.

For ASCG Inc. a combination of an improving economy and acquisitions of selected out-of-state firms is driving the engineering group's current growth spurt in Alaska. ASCG is currently working on a wide range of projects in 12 Western states.

Current work includes national defense contracts such as the reactivation of Alaska's Fort Greely military reservation to support President Bush's missile defense initiative. Its land development projects include a tribal casino in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge.

Transportation projects include an Oregon Department of Transportation cracked bridge renovation and replacement program and 15 separate airport renovation and expansion projects in Oregon and Washington.

"We have grown into a geographically diverse company that is less vulnerable to local business swings and able to generate a reliable profit for our ASRC shareholders," said John McClellan, ASCG's president.

Bob Poe, senior vice president of the company, said that historically out-of-state companies have come to Alaska to do business, taking their profits back to owners outside the state. "ASCG is an Alaska-owned and operated company that is doing business both inside Alaska and Outside, returning our profits to Alaska," Poe said.

ASCG has offices in Alaska and regional offices in Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

Much of ASRC's business is in the hard-hat industrial sectors, but one exception is ASRC Growth Capital, a development financing bank that targets higher-risk commercial and industrial developments with a special emphasis in rural Alaska.

ASRC Growth Capital has financed many types of industrial and commercial projects, including a sawmill project near Ketchikan and an environmental services company in Fairbanks. The bank works closely with larger commercial banks. While it is small it has been profitable, according to David Hoffman, its president.

Several hundred new jobs have been created or sustained in the state as a result of the bank's lending, Hoffman said.

The brightest prospects for ASRC, however, are now in its own back yard.

If a natural gas project moves ahead it will revive activity on the North Slope, leading to new exploration on lands in the foothills of the slope which are owned by ASRC and which have good potential for gas discoveries.

ASRC has exploration agreements with companies on the lands, but until it is known that a gas pipeline will exist to take the gas to market it is difficult for the companies involved to commit millions of dollars to new exploration for gas.

ASRC could also have a small percentage of ownership in a gas pipeline through its investment in Pacific Star Energy LLC, which has an option along with Cook Inlet Region Inc. of Anchorage to become a partner with MidAmerican Energy Holding Co. in building the Alaska portion of a gas pipeline.

ASRC Energy Services will very likely be involved in pipeline construction, whether the MidAmerican group builds it or the North Slope producers wind up building the pipeline.

The ASRC company has more experience in building pipelines in Arctic conditions than any other U.S. company, and is today the major pipeline builder in the state.

Under its previous name of Natchiq Inc., the company was heavily engaged with the producers in their $125 million conceptual feasibility and engineering study of the project, which was done in 2000 and 2001.

ASRC was also involved in engineering studies of the natural gas conditioning plant at Prudhoe Bay, an estimated $2 billion facility which is needed as a part of the overall pipeline project, along with studies of a new pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest.

If ASRC Energy Services is well positioned to be involved in the gas project, this is no accident, according to Stophlet.

"We've worked hard to develop a reputation for efficiency and quality among our custumers," Stophlet said.

Evidence of that is that the company beat out competitors to build the 25-mile Kenai-Kachemak Pipe Line, a new 12-inch pipeline built in 2003 to carry gas from new discoveries near Ninilchik, on the Kenai Peninsula, to the Enstar Natural Gas Co. system.

The KKPL pipeline is now being extended further south on the peninsula, and ASRC is in line to do that work, too.