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Man who selected Prudhoe Bay for state ownership honored by AAPG
Thomas R. Marshall received an honorary life membership award from the Pacific Section of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in Anchorage May 21.
Marshall earned a degree in geology from the University of Colorado.
He moved to Alaska in the 1950s, was president of the Alaska Geological Society in 1959 and in 1960 went to work for the state.
The AAPG cited Marshall for setting and enforcing environmental and performance standards for the infant oil and gas industry in Alaska, including writing and reviewing the state’s first pool and field rules. He called a performance bond when a company failed to meet state drilling standards, sending a message to other operators, ordered Cook Inlet operators to install deck drains on platforms to prevent oil resident from washing into the inlet, and wrote the first conservation order directing a Cook Inlet operator to preserve natural gas, rather than flaring it. Prudhoe Bay selection Early in his career with the state, while he was a land selection officer with the Department of Natural Resources, Marshall made his most notable contribution to the state of Alaska: he selected North Slope coastal acreage around Prudhoe Bay for state ownership as part of the state’s land entitlement under the Alaska Statehood Act.
The AAPG said the 1.5 million acre selection on the Arctic coast, which Marshall made based on his knowledge of regional geology and his practical field experience, was opposed by many in DNR and the state Legislature.
It was called “Marshall’s folly.”
The federal Bureau of Land Management also opposed the selection too because it wanted to keep selections in neat, square blocks.
The selection was finally approved — and in time for the land title to be transferred to the state before land claim settlement controversies froze selection activity.
Those who called it “Marshall’s folly” must have been thinking of “Seward’s folly,” one of the names bestowed on the proposal of U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867.
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