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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Cosmopolitan: Geologist employs
wit in naming lower Cook Inlet oil prospect
Rose Ragsdale For Petroleum Directory
Senior officials sat down with geologists at ARCO Alaska Inc. in the mid-1990s and laid their cards on the table. Top management at the Los Angeles-based parent company, Atlantic Richfield Co., were “concerned,” they said, that the geologists working for the company in Alaska did not have enough international experience.
Phrasing this not-so veiled criticism as delicately as possible, the managers told the Alaska’s ARCO rock hounds that perhaps they weren’t “cosmopolitan” enough to satisfactorily do their jobs.
The managers then discussed transferring the geologists working in Alaska to other ARCO locations in the world such as Los Angeles, Houston and Indonesia.
Sitting in that meeting, ARCO geologist Bob Swenson said the discussion caught his attention, especially the term “cosmopolitan.”
Shortly afterward, Swenson completed work in 1995 on a project in the lower Cook Inlet just offshore north of Anchor Point. Drawing on the Starichkof State No. 1 well drilled in 1967 by Pennzoil and numerous geological clues, Swenson said he “came up with the concept” for an oil prospect at the offshore location and presented it to his superiors.
As the geologist credited with identifying the prospect, Swenson enjoyed the privilege of giving the prospect a name.
“The earlier remark came to mind, so I named it ‘Cosmopolitan’,” said Swenson, and in so doing, perhaps sent a not-so veiled message of his own to in Los Angeles.
Exploration continues at prospect Over time, Swenson’s “concept” metamorphosed into the 24,601-acre Cosmopolitan unit that today encompasses seven state and two federal offshore oil and gas leases where unspecified quantities of oil have been discovered.
More than a decade later, Cosmopolitan is being actively explored by ARCO Alaska’s successor, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc., and generating excitement, according to its newest working interest owner, Pioneer Alaska Resources Inc. Pioneer said recently it will up its investment from 10 percent to 50 percent and become operator of the unit.
Swenson, meanwhile, left the company to become a consultant a few years ago and in 2005, joined the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys in the Alaska Department of Natural Resources as acting director and state geologist.
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