Arctic Slope Regional Corp.

• Author: STRICKER, JULIE
• Position: Statistical Data Included - Company Profile

This growing corporation reached two major milestones recently.

It's no secret that Arctic Slope Regional Corp. is sitting on top of the world: Any geography student could pinpoint the company's Barrow headquarters on the globe. Yet Arctic Slope is riding high for another reason: It achieved two long-awaited milestones in 2000.

Four years ago, ASRC set a goal of becoming a $1 billion revenue corporation by 2001. "We reached that milestone in 2000," says President and CEO Jacob Adams. "We're there."

When Arctic Slope announced its $1 billion goal, it quickly closed on the milestone until turmoil in the oil fields in 1999 slowed its calculated advance. Oil prices sank to $8 a barrel before shooting past $30 a barrel just months later. At the same time, ASRC's oil field service subsidiaries were pinched when two of their biggest partners--BP Amoco and ARCO--merged. Arctic Slope's revenues dipped, from $868.68 million in 1998 to $865.62 million in 1999. But Alpine's startup, with an estimated 60,000 barrels to 80,000 barrels pumped daily, helped propel ASRC to its $1 billion goal. Alpine, partially on ASRC lands, is the first significant commercial oil production on lands conveyed to an Alaska Native corporation--ASRC's second goal.

It seems to be an unusual accomplishment when you consider that ASRC shares the North Slope with the giant Prudhoe Bay oil fields, and has been a major force in the oil industry for the past 20 years. But owning land with a producing oil well has been just out of Arctic Slope's reach since its inception.

The corporation got its start in 1971 under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, when ASRC received $22.5 million and 5.1 million acres of land on the remote North Slope. Although Arctic Slope has title to rich coal beds in Northwest Alaska, and other potential mineral resources, the corporation was shut out of the oil-bearing lands in Prudhoe Bay--a move that still rankles today.

Under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, Arctic Slope acquired lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It helped reestablish the traditional village of Nuiqsut on the borders of NPR-A, and gained control of 69,000 acres around the village.

In 1996, Arco Alaska Inc. (now Phillips Petroleum) discovered an oil deposit that lay partly on Arctic Slope and Nuiqsut village corporation Kuukpik lands. That deposit, the Alpine oil field, has estimated recoverable reserves...