ExxonMobil in Alaska: On the ground in 1921

According to the book “Alaska: The 49th State,” by Claus M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, in 1921 representatives from Mobil’s General Petroleum came to Alaska to examine oil seepages at Cape Simpson, near Barrow, finding “two flows that encouraged their hopes of finding oil in quantities suitable for commercial production, but that did not happen for economic reasons — namely the discoveries of oil on the West Coast, particularly in California. But favorable geological conditions also existed in other parts of Alaska.”

Other reports put General Petroleum geologists in an Alaska field office in 1921, and for the next few years in different parts of the state, their field work resulting in a decision to spud a well at “Yakataga Beach” in Icy Bay, which is part of the Gulf of Alaska.