The First Oil Wells in the Alaska Arctic: 'The difficult we can do at once, the impossible takes a little longer.'.

• Author: Nixon, Ross
• Position: RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL SECTION / OIL & GAS

The path to Alaska's modern day oil prosperity began with a top priority and long forgotten WWII expedition. This mission was a true epic, worthy of remembrance.

Alaskan people always knew some sort of oil supply lay beneath the Arctic. For generations, Alaska Natives collected tarry lumps of sand and burned them for warmth. Early explorers mentioned finding oil sands. Rumors floated around of tar-filled lakes north of the Brooks Range. The "King of the Arctic," Charles Brower, reported oil seeps along the Arctic Coast to the chief geologist of Standard Oil Company in the 1920s. A Wainwright teacher even filed oil claims for seepages he found at Cape Simpson, also in the '20s.

President Harding designated an Indiana-sized chunk of Alaska as Naval Petroleum Reserve 4 (NPR 4) in 1923. The times saw the US Navy converting from coal-fired ships to oil burners. Securing land for an emergency wartime fuel source made sense. At that time, the states of Texas and Oklahoma rolled in oil money from their booming oil fields, keeping the isolated Alaska North Slope off the oil man's radar. Through the 1920s there'd been geologic and topographical surveys north of the Arctic Circle, but of the oil potential there, little was known.

Under the pressure of a mechanized war run on limited oil resources, the US Navy sent an exploratory group to check NPR 4 for oil in 1944. Lieutenant William T. Foran USNR led the party. As a member of one of the 1920s geological survey teams, Foran believed the North Slope held large amounts of oil. Flown from Fairbanks by the famous Bush pilot Sig Wien and led by Simon Paneak of Chandalar Lake, the naval explorers found oil seep evidence throughout NPR 4. Interestingly enough, the horrible North Slope weather gave a fortuitous break. Foran wrote: "Impossible flying conditions forced considerable waiting in Barrow, but much was accomplished, and waiting periods provided time for gathering invaluable information from old-time resident trader Charles Brower and from the parties' veteran pilot Sig Wien."

In his final report on the month-long expedition Foran noted, "A petroliferous area of indicated major importance exists in the confines of NPA 4." He recommended oil exploration be conducted there immediately. Officials in Washington DC, with the blessing of President Roosevelt and the chief of Naval Operations, ordered a fully equipped drilling expedition be sent to NPR 4.

Never before had oil been extracted from the Arctic...