40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: A geologist finds the right words

Young co-leader of 1963 summer field party stirs ambitions of California major to find the elephant lurking on the North Slope

Rose Ragsdale

For Petroleum News

Gar Pessel’s introduction to Alaska had nothing to do with oil.

The Richfield Oil Co. geologist, who wrote a letter that set in motion a chain of events leading to the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, traveled to the state in 1959 to look for coal for U.S. Steel.

Pessel, a California Technology Institute graduate student who was raised in Hawaii during World War II, spent that first visit studying the geology of the Gulf of Alaska.

Two years later, the experience likely earned him a shot at a return trip to Alaska, this time to look for petroleum for Richfield Oil. In 1963, Richfield sent Pessel to the North Slope as co-party chief with another young geologist, C.G. “Gil” Mull, of a summer field party assigned to study the area’s geology.

Toward the end of that first season, Pessel sat down in his tent and penciled out the now famous note.

“Gil was looking over my shoulder the entire time, and we were conversing back and forth on the phrasing in the letter,” Pessel said.

He and Mull had spent the summer prowling across the Slope in a Bell G2 helicopter.

“We knew we were in a petroleum basin and we started seeing some potentially good sands,” he recalled in a recent interview.

Until that point, Pessel said he had been discouraged by the structures they saw in the Foothills.

He and Mull actually identified two oil-filled sandy outcrops, one on the Katakturuk River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and another one on the Sagavanirktuk River south of the Prudhoe Bay field discovery site.

“We were hopeful all along, but it consolidated our opinion about the potential of the area. It had the Big Three: source rocks, reservoir rocks and structures,” Pessel said.

The letter Pessel wrote conveyed the hopefulness that the two young geologists felt, but it also conveyed an underlying excitement about the possibilities.

“We have a good section of excellent reservoir possibilities, and positive proof of the petroliferous nature of these sands.  If one cannot get an oil field out of these conditions, I give up,” wrote Pessel.

H.C. “Harry” Jamison, Richfield’s district manager, said the missive was brief, to the point and said all the right things.

It also didn’t hurt that the man to whom the letter was addressed, Jamison’s level-headed district geologist, Ben Ryan, wholeheartedly agreed with Pessel and Mull.

Ryan later said Pessel’s letter was perfect for getting management to spring loose money for a seismic survey.

Pessel also helped destiny along when he and Mull gave Humble executives a presentation on their findings during the winter of 1964-65.

“Humble came in with us that next summer,” he recalled.

Pessel, meanwhile, switched from geology to geophysics after Richfield’s merger with Atlantic Refining Co.

“I had an extensive mathematical background and also geology, and interpreting geology and geophysics put them together,” he said. “I kept doing geophysics and I switched back to geology the last year I was with Richfield.”

In 1971, Pessel got a job with the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, which included the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. A year later, when the state created the Alaska Geological Survey, he was drafted to serve as senior geologist.

Pessel continued to work for the state for 20 years. During this period, he worked in the Brooks Range, and Chugach and Talkeetna mountains, and served as section chief and deputy director.

When he retired from the state in 1991, Pessel began teaching field geology and computer applications for geology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He also ran the geology department’s student labs. After six years, he finally retired.

“I kept telling them that when your computer expert is 63 years old, something is wrong,” he quipped.

Today, Pessel, an accomplished pilot and flight instructor, divides his time between summers at a cabin at Sheep Mountain and winters in Oregon. He also helps out with a small air taxi service.