40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: Oil field discovery of the century

Publication strives to recognize people, events that shaped Prudhoe Bay, making petroleum production in Alaska’s Arctic a reality

Forty years ago, Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field, was discovered on the windswept coast of Alaska’s North Slope. The field, located some 400 miles from the nearest city, Fairbanks, brought worldwide attention to the new and thinly populated state, and thrust it into the forefront of United States oil and gas production.

In “Harnessing a Giant: 40 Years at Prudhoe Bay,” Petroleum News has sought to direct much-deserved attention to people and images of that long ago era. We hope to share their stories and photographs in commemorating the 40-year anniversary of the field’s discovery and to highlight the importance of its subsequent development and the implications of that development on Alaska, the nation and the world.

Intense scrutiny during the past two generations has centered on construction and operation of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which transports hydrocarbons from Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope fields to an ice-free port in Valdez. But relatively little attention has focused on the dynamic era that set the stage for the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay field.

Indeed, monuments have been erected to immortalize builders of the pipeline, and yet most people struggle to name even one member of the Atlantic Richfield Co. team that discovered Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in the Western Hemisphere and a major source of U.S. energy for more than 30 years.

How did the discovery of Prudhoe Bay come about? What events led up to this world-changing moment? Who were the key figures in this early period of Alaska’s history? And what stories should be immortalized in the saga of the field’s discovery and development?

Prudhoe Bay, estimated to contain more than 16 billion barrels of recoverable crude and nearly 26 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, has transformed the petroleum industry, including the companies that found the field and others that profited from its development as well as subsequent discovery and development of other North Slope fields.

In Alaska, the importance of the Prudhoe Bay field cannot the overstated. Taxes and royalties on the field’s petroleum output has accounted for the lion’s share of the State of Alaska’s public revenue for decades. Even today, 31 years after the startup of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and first production from the huge Arctic reservoir, the field still accounts for more than 70 percent of Alaska’s total unrestricted revenues, and nearly half of the state’s gross state product.

Moreover, Prudhoe Bay’s bounty has enabled Alaska policymakers to create the Alaska Permanent Fund, a one-of-a-kind mega savings account currently valued at nearly $40 billion. From this pot of money, every Alaskan has received a dividend every year since 1980, averaging more than $1,000 each.

The Prudhoe Bay field is also the backbone of a state economy made robust by oil and gas investment that is directly responsible for thousands of high-paying jobs and tens of thousands of support and service industry positions.

Looking to the future, the impact of the 1968 discovery will continue to be felt by Alaskans and, indeed the nation, for generations to come as industry moves forward with development of giant heavy oil accumulations above and near the Prudhoe Bay field and the field’s vast quantities of natural gas. A pipeline carrying 4.5 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to markets in the Lower 48 via Canada and to population centers in Southcentral Alaska is on the horizon, and some forecasters predict its completion by 2020 or sooner.

—Rose Ragsdale, editor