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Veteran geologist Gil Mull retires
Career of more than 40 years started before discovery of Prudhoe Bay field
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
Veteran geologist Charles G. “Gil” Mull has retired from the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas after working for the state for 22 years. Mull, with his vast knowledge of Alaska geology, has become something of an institution since he first arrived in the state in 1961. He was part of the team that discovered the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield.
Mull and his wife Yvonne are now moving to Santa Fe, N.M. However, his plans do not include retirement from geology.
“I tell people that I’m not retiring from geology, I’m just moving my files to a different location - I’m retiring from a regular paycheck,” Mull said. “... I just couldn’t see myself in a sun-city sort of thing.”
Mull expects to do Alaska-related geological consulting and will continue working with the U.S. Geological Survey on the preparation of new digital maps of Alaska.
This little outfit called Richfield Mull’s eventual connection with Richfield Oil and Alaska came about by chance.
While doing his geology degree, Mull funded his winter skiing by working during the summer as a geological field assistant for oil companies. During the winter he earned his meals by working as a sorority houseboy.
“With summer income and meals supplied during the winter that left me with enough money to spend a lot of time skiing - life was pretty good,” he said.
After doing a summer job in 1956 for Gulf Oil, Mull went to Casper, Wyoming, to scout out a job for the next summer season. While waiting for an interview at one oil company he noticed that there was another company located in the same building.
“Upstairs there was this little outfit called Richfield. I’d never heard of it,” he said. “I thought ‘well, while I’m waiting I’ll go up and talk to this little Richfield outfit’ ... and I got a summer job (with them).” Mull did three successful summer seasons with Richfield in the Rocky Mountains.
A ‘temporary’ Alaska assignment In 1958 Richfield started sending field parties up to Alaska as a follow up to the Swanson River discovery. After several unsuccessful attempts at landing a summer job in Alaska, Mull finally found an opportunity to see the Last Frontier after he joined Richfield as a full-time employee in the spring of 1960.
“They said ‘well, we’re sending people up for two years ... if you want to come back we’ll ship you back to the Lower 48’,” Mull said, chuckling as he remembered thinking that two years would be ample time to see Alaska.
He arrived in Alaska in March 1961 and immediately took a liking to his new situation.
“Alyeska ski resort had just opened,” Mull said. “The first time (my colleagues) took me down there ... it was 20 above, there was probably 15, 18 inches of fresh snow and there was probably all of 15 cars in the parking lot.” This seemed a whole lot better than the crowded Aspen scene.
And work proved pretty exciting as well, with plenty of exploration funding for the new oil province.
“We got up here and they said ‘here’s $20,000 and a helicopter and a floatplane - go pound on rocks’,” Mull said.
During his initial two-year assignment in Alaska, Mull became involved in several projects. His main job involved exploration and well geology around Cape Yakataga on the Gulf of Alaska. In 1962, however, he did some fieldwork on the Alaska Peninsula and in the Kandik basin along the Yukon, near the Canadian border.
“(We) chartered a river boat from Circle and steamed up the Yukon to Eagle,” Mull said. “So, we’d camp on shore and then fly with the helicopter out to adjacent outcrops of rock.”
Mull saw no reason to return to the Lower 48 - life was becoming pretty good.
Discovery of Prudhoe Bay In the early ’60s, there were limits on how much exploration acreage an individual company could lease either north or south of the Alaska Range. With a full quota of leases in the southern part of Alaska, Richfield started picking up leases in the Interior and on the North Slope, Mull said.
“In June of ’63 they sent a whole bunch of us to the North Slope,” Mull said.
Mull started working with another young geologist name Gar Pessel, doing broad reconnaissance mapping between Umiat and the Canadian border. After finding some oil seeps, oil sands and oil bearing sandstones, Pessel sent the following note to the district geologist for Richfield: “We have a good section with 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!”
Harry Jamison, a manager in Richfield’s Los Angeles office, took decisive action by dispatching a seismic crew to the North Slope for the winter of 1963-64. In the following winter the seismic crew found the subsurface structure of the Prudhoe Bay field.
By the time of the Prudhoe Bay discovery well was drilled in the winter of 1967-68 Richfield Oil had merged with Atlantic Refining, to form Atlantic Richfield, and Humble Oil (predecessor to ExxonMobil), had bought into the leases.
Gil Mull was one of the well geologists at the Prudhoe Bay State No. 1 discovery well drilled in the winter of 1967-68 - he had quit Richfield and joined Humble Oil in May 1967.
Continuing fieldwork While seismic surveys and drilling activities moved ahead on the North Slope during the winters, the geologists continued their fieldwork during the summers.
“In ’68 and ’69 we were working mainly in the central and western Brooks Range,” Mull said. This phase of fieldwork in the Brooks Range and on the North Slope continued into the early ’70s. Then in 1974 and 1975 Mull returned to Cape Yakataga, working down the coast to Yakutat, doing reconnaissance mapping in the Chugach Mountains and Mount St. Elias country.
“I spent part of the summer (of 1975) on the North Slope and then, about the end of July, went to McCarthy,” Mull said. “You could have flown anywhere at any time ... with day after day of sunny (weather). (We were) working up around Mount St. Elias and Mount Logan, up on the Bagley Ice field and the Malaspina Glacier - life was tough!”
Moving to USGS By this time Exxon had taken over Humble Oil and had plans to centralize its exploration operations out of Houston, Texas. Mull started hearing hints that his boss was going to move him to an office job. On one occasion, after Mull had volunteered to lead another field party, his boss’s words seemed particularly ominous: “You just talked yourself into another field program this summer, didn’t you? You’re going to have to settle down to a desk job one of these days - learn to be an oilman.”
Realizing that this scenario did not fit his game plan, Mull decided to quit Exxon. In the summer of 1975 he joined the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.
When the Naval Petroleum Reserve Alaska became the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the USGS started an NPR-A exploration program and in the spring of 1977 Mull saw an opportunity to return to Alaska.
“I spent three years on the NPR-A operation and also worked for the (USGS) Branch of Alaska Geology,” Mull said. The Branch of Alaska Geology dealt with the whole of Alaska and tended to focus on mining and mineral studies.
The Alaska state survey 1980 brought the era of land withdrawals and the beginning of the ANWR controversy. And by 1981 the budgets for the USGS were running down. Mull decided to leave the USGS and join the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. He worked for the state of Alaska from then until his recent retirement, moving from the DGGS to the Division of Oil and Gas in 2001.
In his years of working for the state, Mull has done fieldwork almost every summer, mainly in the Brooks Range and on the North Slope. A list of more than 60 published reports and maps that he has authored or co-authored attests to his knowledge of Alaska geology; Mull regularly talks about Alaska geology at professional meetings.
Mull feels particularly strongly about the role of the government geological surveys. He thinks that in the past the state of Alaska could have provided more funding for the DGGS to prime the pump for future oil exploration.
“I don’t think that there’s any question the USGS work that had been done (prior to the discovery of Prudhoe Bay) ... probably advanced industry studies by 20 years,” Mull said, “... industry can take that (framework) and do more detailed studies and do seismic work ... focusing more on what they do.”
And industry tends to move geologists around to different parts of the world to broaden their experience, while the surveys provide a continuity of knowledge a single region.
“The continuity is something that generally the industry does not have ... so that’s one of the real values of the publicly funded surveys - establishing a baseline, establishing a framework,” Mull said.
Back to the Southwest So, more than 40 years after first arriving in Alaska, Mull is returning to live in the Southwest. Although he will greatly miss immediate contact with his many colleagues in Alaska, Mull is looking forward to Santa Fe’s full four seasons and flourishing cultural scene.
“It’s a diverse, multicultural community,” Mull said. “There’s a big arts scene ... there’s a diversity of people doing a diversity of things.”
In fact, Mull enjoys music and art, especially ethnic weaving and pottery. His new home will provide ample opportunity to follow up on these interests. He’ll also be able to pick up again on a fascination with archaeology that he developed during his youth in Colorado.
However, his enduring interest in geology will ensure that he continues to play his part in the Alaska geology scene.
“Geology is a mixture of science and art ... nothing is fixed and determined,” Mull said. “There’s a lot of interpretation and uncertainty.”
Mull just loves to piece together the evidence from the rocks to try to make sense of Mother Nature.
“I guess that’s why I like geology,” Mull said. “It’s an intellectual challenge, combined with all the other good things that you get to do.”
Although the fieldwork can bring its own set of challenges.
“There’s times when you think ‘what the hell am I doing here’ ... you’re on a mountain top and the wind is blowing snow at you or your mountain tent is surrounded by six inches of snow that fell the night before - and it’s July,” Mull said.
But days of clear weather and unparalleled Alaska scenery have made up for that, especially when coupled with piecing together the never-ending puzzle of how the earth evolved.
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