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40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: Oil rush lifts aviation fortunes Exploration boom takes off with history-making airlifts to North Slope Rose Ragsdale For Petroleum News
The immense size of the North Slope and its challenging terrain and uncharted waters left the oil hunters with but two options: learn to fly or find a good pilot.
Wien Alaska Airlines, Interior Airways, Alaska Airlines and Economy Rotor Aids, predecessor to Era Aviation, among others eagerly accepted missions from exploration teams, geologists and scouts. A thriving aviation service industry developed, equipped with everything from Piper Cubs, Cessna 180s and Widgeons to World War II-era C46s and Hercules C-130s and helicopters.
Jim Magoffin, founder of Interior Airways, energetically whittled a niche for his company in the Arctic oil fields by scouting out a strategic location on the banks of the Sagavanirktok River and setting up a prosperous airport called Sag No. 1. The airport, adopting the name Sagwon from Texas and Oklahoma pilots slurring the name, became a self-supporting service center in the Arctic and served a never-ending stream of aircraft. Interior Airways flourished in a market heavily dominated by Wien.
ARCO drafts C-130 The Susie No.1 well, the famous dry hole that Richfield completed before turning to the Prudhoe Bay structure, has another often overlooked distinction. It was the first wildcat well where the industry took on the challenge of moving a 2,000-ton drilling rig and necessary equipment and supplies over difficult terrain to a remote and desolate place more than 50 miles from the nearest navigable water.
Mo Benson, general manager of production operations for Richfield Oil Co. at the time, looked at all options before deciding that the best approach would be to fly the rig to the location.
There was only one drawback. Only one airplane could fly the rig intact to the slope – the Lockheed Hercules C-130 – that had been used by Richfield in March 1965 to transport 18 loads of cargo to Sagwon, a gravel airstrip on the North Slope about 80 miles south of the coastline. That job had included moving one 24-ton D-8 Caterpillar with a blade.
The price wasn’t cheap. Richfield would pay $100,000 to use the aircraft for exactly 21 days, beginning Jan. 21, 1966. No extensions would be allowed, no matter what the reason. Richfield also had to agree to cover the cost of sending Alaska Airlines pilots to the African country then called Rhodesia, where the Herc was hauling copper on a demonstration basis, to get type-rated.
BP chartered C-130s, too The Lockheed Hercules C-130 soon gained a reputation for being one of the most highly desired planes for use on Alaska’s North Slope.
By the end of 1968, there were 11 Lockheed Hercules C-130 aircraft operating from Fairbanks to the North Slope, routinely carrying 24-ton loads at a cost of $4,500 per trip.
BP called on the C-130 transport planes to fly in drilling rigs to the Slope for its early drilling at Prudhoe Bay. The airlift involved five chartered C-130s, each costing $250,000 a month, plus three Super Constellation aircraft.
John Matyr, then general manager and vice president of BP Alaska, described the difficulty of these early logistics: “I recall those great Hercules thundering through the winter night and the great flurries of snow whirling up along the lights burning at the side of the ice runway,” he said. “It was the most difficult operation that I’ve ever been associated with,” adds Matyr, a veteran of Kuwait, New Guinea, Trinidad and Libya oil fields as well as gold mines in southern India.
Aviation heyday The Fairbanks airport swarmed with an amazing variety of planes, including Dakotas and 737s, as one of the biggest civilian airlifts in history got under way.
Harsh winter conditions made the going rough for many, yet the planes kept flying and the work got done.
One inexperienced pilot, who flew a light plane from Fairbanks during sub-zero temperatures, was foolish enough to switch off his engine as he came to the end of his taxiing. It took three days to get it started again.
In all, aircraft transported more than 135,000 tons of freight to the Slope during a 12-month period and shuttled some 50,000 passengers to more than 20 different drilling sites. With not enough aircraft to go around, some oil companies had to charter their own, mostly DC-7s.
On the North Slope, the most expensive operation was ARCO’s use of a giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter to move entire rigs, broken down into 20-ton loads from one site to the next.
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