ExxonMobil's North Slope Legacy.

AuthorStrieker, Julie
PositionOIL & GAS

In 1963, several major oil companies braved bone-chilling winds and blizzard conditions to drill exploratory wells on the North Slope, coming up with dry hole after dry hole after dry hole and burning money along the way. By 1967, only ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) and Humble Oil & Refining Co. were left. After much debate, crews moved the sole drill rig to Prudhoe Bay.

Petroleum geologist Tom Marshall chose the area as part of Alaska's 100 million acre land holdings after statehood because it reminded him of Wyoming oil basins. The 1964 selection of that chunk of frozen tundra drew skepticism from many, but Alaska's North Slope had long been known to have oil seeps and Alaska Natives had burned tarry lumps of sand for generations. Then-President Warren G. Harding set aside an Indiana-sized chunk of land in 1923 as Naval Petroleum Reserve 4, now the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Drilling was slow and arduous, until one of the workers tested a pressure valve--and the gas erupted from the pipe so strongly that the crew ignited a 50-foot flare. The following March, the companies confirmed the presence of oil, lots of oil. It was a major turning point for Alaska--and Humble Oil, which in 1972 officially adopted the name Exxon, was on the ground floor.

By this time. however, the companies--Standard Oil, Esso, and Humble--that became Exxon had been active in Alaska's oil and gas industry for more than half a century, operating under a variety of names.

In 1921, Exxon predecessor General Petroleum opened its first field office in Anchorage. At the time. Anchorage was slowly emerging from its roots as a dusty, muddy tent community near the mouth of Ship Creek where the Alaska Railroad was headquartered.

It wasn't the most appealing community, with many of its early residents leaving to serve in World War I or in search of greener pastures after construction of the railroad was completed. The city was incorporated on November 23, 1920, with a population of about 1,850 residents.

But there were much bigger things on the horizon.

'On the Map'

By now, Alaska was on the map for oil and gas potential, with natural seeps reported at Katalla, southeast of present-day Cordova, and the north side of Controller Bay in 1896. Alaska's first commercial oil production was in Katalla in 1902. Small-scale production continued in the area until 1933, when the local refinery was damaged by fire and the site was abandoned.

In 1925, General Petroleum drilled...

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