By Cmdr. William Jakubowicz, SC, USN
The focus of this edition of the Supply Corps Newsletter is the NAVSUP Fuels Enterprise. This article provides an introduction to fuels–what it is, the organization, how requirements are generated and the infrastructure that supports the mission.
The U.S. Navy Petroleum Enterprise receives, stores, and issues (delivers, sells or transfers) approximately $3 billion a year of operational fuel for use in ships, aircraft, motor vehicles and other equipment in almost every location where it is needed around the globe. The NAVSUP Naval Petroleum Office (NPO), in conjunction with NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Centers (FLCs) are the Navy catalysts for seamless distribution to the warfighter by ensuring comprehensive management of nearly all naval shore based capitalized fuel sales. This mission requires great teamwork, technical knowledge, training and diligence to provide top quality support whenever and wherever it is needed.
The NAVSUP NPO is located in the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Headquarters Building at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and is colocated with DLA Energy and the other service partners: the Air Force Petroleum Office and the Army Petroleum Center. The mission of the NPO is “to coordinate Naval bulk Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants (POL) supply chain policy and procedures, to provide logistics support services to operational commanders and to perform the mission of the Navy and Marine Corps’ Service Control Point (SCP) for bulk POL.” The SCP role is to represent the Navy and Marine Corps as the Department of the Navy’s (DoN) direct interface to DLAEnergy, Department of Defense’s (DoD) Executive Agent for Bulk Petroleum Products, and the Joint Petroleum Enterprise on all things related to fuel from policy, management, inventory, engineering support, requirements determination and fuel quality and control.
When discussing bulk petroleum products, there are two major types of fuel that are received, stored and distributed from Navy managed Defense Fuel Supply Points (DFSP). These are:
Shipboard fuel
• F-76 (Distillate Fuel Marine–DFM)–Navy’s military specification diesel for shipboard propulsion
Aviation fuel:
• JP-5–Navy’s military specification aviation jet fuel
• JP-8–Air Force’s military specification aviation jet fuel
• F-24–Commercial fuel, Jet-A, Jet-A1, that has been “additized” to meet the needs of the military.
The main distinction between JP-5 and other aviation fuels is the higher flash point required for JP-5 due to the use aboard Naval vessels; 144°F for JP-5 vs. 100°F of JP-8. The infrastructure managed to store and distribute these products is wide and varied.
The NAVSUP NPO, serves as NAVSUP’s Products and Service Champion for fuel, providing oversight support to NAVSUP FLC and Marine Corps Air Stations and Bases fuel operations. The staff consists of 34 civilian employees and five military service members, to include U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters Liaisons.
NAVSUP FLCs manage 16 deep-water terminals and 26 air station operations, which include joint base operations at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI and Joint Reserve Bases at Fort Worth, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Marine Corps manages 20 air stations and ground operations.
Petroleum products received, stored and issued at these DoN facilities are not owned by the Navy. This inventory is the property of DLA-Energy, and sales return funds to the Defense Working Capital Fund for further procurement of products. The Navy and Marine Corps represents approximately 30 percent of DoD’s overall fuel sales, with an annual usage of 27 million barrels (1.134 billion gallons) or $3.38 billion in sales.
The total real property value of DoN capitalized fuels infrastructure is more than $19 billion, and with this large global footprint comes a large annual maintenance bill. Most of this maintenance bill is funded from the DLA-Energy Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization (SRM) program. Our facilities annually require an average of $200 million in maintenance in order to comply with environmental and regulatory requirements. Submitting, funding and executing maintenance projects requires intensive coordination from NPO, DLA Energy, the site(s) and the project execution agents–Naval Facilities Engineering Command, the Army Corps of Engineers or the Air Force Civil Engineering Service Activity. In addition, to maintenance dollars facilities can compete for DLA-Energy Military Construction (MILCON) program funds at the annual Installation Planning and Review Board (IPRB). The IPRB funds are five-year program funds for long-term projects that recapitalize or modernize a facility. NAVSUP NPO manages in excess of $800 million in MILCON projects through the stages of project development and execution at Navy and Marine Corps fuel facilities.
The professionals that run these fuel terminals and air station operations are a diverse group of military, government civilian and contractor personnel. These professionals have expertise in Fuel Operations, Quality Surveillance, Facility Engineering and Management, Environmental Management, and Inventory Management. The military personnel are Supply Corps officers with the 1307 sub-specialty and Aviation Boatswain Fuels. The government civilians are career government civilians and military retirees starting their second career. Additionally we have DLA-Energy funded contractors who operate our government owned-contractor operated sites with a NAVSUP Contracting Officer’s Representative.
NPO is also the Community of Interest Lead for the Petroleum Management (1307) Sub-Specialty Code Program. 1307 designated officers are those officers who have completed one of two training pipelines or self-nominated based on experience for the 1307 sub-spec. The two training pipelines are the Operational Logistics Fuels Internship program, and the University of Kansas’ 811 post-graduate program.
The internship program selects three to four officers at the O-2 or O-3 paygrade completing their first sea tour. Officers who complete the internship will then be assigned to fuel terminals and air stations along with fleet staff.
The University of Kansas’ (KU) 811 postgraduate program selects four to six officers per year at the O-3 and O-4 paygrade, who have completed two operational tours. Upon completion of the KU-811 program these officers can expect to be detailed to FLC Code700 positions, or fleet fuel planning billets at U.S. Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command or DLA Energy.
This overview of the Navy fuels community should provide you with a brief snapshot of the dynamic and exciting team of experts that manage the Class IIIB supply chain. The additional articles that follow will amplify this discussion and describe in more depth how NAVSUP provides top tier fuel support to our Navy, Marine and Joint customers.