Chevron pulls back.

• Author: Tyson, Ray
• Position: Chevron Corp. reasseses management strategy forcing a pull out in Alaska

After more than a century, the oil giant cuts back and hopes for better times

After more than a hundred years in Alaska, Chevron rode quietly into the sunset, joining the growing list of frustrated oil companies that have decided their future does not lie in the frigid northland. Chevron hasn't entirely abandoned Alaska, but the closing of the company's exploration and land office in August climaxed years of statewide operational and employment cutbacks and marked the end of an era in Alaska's petroleum industry.

Alaska's oldest oil company, Chevron (formerly Standard of California) was here even before the Great Alaska Gold Rush of 1898, developing markets for products such as Pearl Oil, a kerosene used to light lamps. When gold fever struck, Chevron's stern-wheeler Oil City delivered goods to miners along the Yukon River from Dawson City to the Klondike. According to one account, the first cargo consisted of 29,000 cases of Pearl Oil, 3,000 boxes of candles and six tons of lamps and lanterns.

As a young geologist doing field work on the North Slope in the early 1960s, Roger Herrera, now a retired BP Exploration (Alaska) executive, remembers how popular Chevron's fuel containers were in the Alaska Bush.

Says Herrera, "My first impressions of Alaska were considerably influenced by those wooden boxes with the Chevron decal. They were all over Alaska. I would salvage them to make a table in my tent or chair or wood for burning. They were used for everything. The utility of Chevron was impressed on me for that reason. They did a lot of marketing."

Over the years, Chevron extended its product distribution line to every corner of Alaska, including Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Valdez, Nome and Bethel. The company launched an aggressive petroleum exploration program and built a refinery. For years, it operated Alaska's first major oil field at Swanson River on the Kenai Peninsula. It was once the largest holder of oil and gas leases in the state.

The turning point for Chevron came in 1986, shortly after the company purchased Gulf Oil and began merging staff and reorganizing its U.S. domestic operations. Chevron's decision to cut back in Alaska was influenced largely by a sudden collapse in world oil prices.

Chevron gave up its marketing facilities around the state, as well as its operatorships or holdings in the Swanson River, Beluga and offshore fields in the Cook Inlet. Last year, the company shut down its Nikiski...