40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: Navy targeted Arctic reserve in 1920s

Presidential order establishes expanse of tundra the size of West Virginia as area designated for petroleum exploration

Rose Ragsdale

For Petroleum News

By executive order, President Warren G. Harding created the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 (now National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska), in 1923, setting aside nearly 24 million acres, or about 38,000 square miles of the Arctic Slope of Alaska for future petroleum needs of the U.S. government.

NPR-4 amounted to about half the area of the entire Arctic Slope north of the Brooks Range, which was now off-limits to commercial production. The reserve included Cape Simpson and extended to the Colville River on the east and south to the crest of the Brooks Range. For a period of four years following the establishment of NPR-4, the U.S. Geological Survey sent a series of geological field parties to explore the area and begin initial exploration of the new petroleum reserve. These field parties were headed by some famous names in the USGS - John Mertie, Jim Gilluly, and P. S. Smith, who later became the director of the USGS. (See attached map)

Test drilling and other exploratory work by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey during the next 30 years, though not extensive, produced no commercially significant discoveries.

In 1943 during World War II, the entire North Slope was withdrawn from public entry under Public Land Order 82, and the Navy, again with the USGS, initiated a major exploration program that lasted nearly a decade.

Marvin Mangus, a USGS geologist who worked on the North Slope for nine field seasons from 1947 to 1958 and later for Atlantic Refining Co. and then Atlantic Richfield Co., said USGS mounted expedition after expedition to explore the area.

“I first went up there in 1947 … We made maps; we set up all the geological nomenclature and the geologic history of the North Slope. The Navy in 1923 set aside that petroleum reserve … because it looked excellent for petroleum production. At that time, the U.S. Navy drilled about 23 holes looking for oil.

“Unfortunately, we did not do too well. We found a field at Umiat; that field had estimated reserves of about 30 million to 100 million barrels of oil. At the time, a 6-inch pipeline from Umiat to Fairbanks would have cost $2 million, so it was not considered commercial by any means. What (the Navy) needed was one well to produce 3,000 barrels a day to make it commercial on the North Slope.

Some 50 years ago, it was so far different than how we do things today, so that it’s hard to compare,” Mangus observed.

Between 1945 and 1952, the government conducted 45 shallow core tests and drilled 36 test wells within and immediately adjacent to NPR-4. The results included one oil field, Umiat, and two small gas fields, Gubik and Barrow; three prospective gas fields, Meade, Square Lake and Wolf Creek; and two minor oil deposits at Simpson and Fish creeks.

Uncle Sam departs

“Being that there were no big finds found in the oil wells there, they shut it down (in 1953),” Mangus recalled. “They ran out of money; and Congress wouldn’t appropriate any more.”

After the close of the Pet-4 program in 1953, the USGS continued mapping the geology and studying the stratigraphy of the Brooks Range and adjacent areas as part of its long-range objectives.

In 1958, the federal government opened parts of the North Slope outside NPR No. 4 to simultaneous filing of oil and gas leasing, and several major oil companies began conducting extensive geophysical and geologic studies throughout northern Alaska.

This development would turn out to be more than important for the future of the oil companies, according to geologist Gil Mull.

That September, after a 60-day simultaneous filing period, the Bureau of Land Management held a drawing from the 7,500 offers it received to lease the 4 million acres in the offering. This was the first sizable area to become available from lands withdrawn 15 years earlier during World War II.

During the summer of 1958, Sinclair Oil Corp. began surface geologic work on the North Slope with a field party based at Umiat for the three-month season.

British Petroleum, interested in reducing its dependence on the Middle East, formed a partnership with Sinclair Oil and Gas Co. to explore the North Slope of Alaska.

At that simultaneous filing, Richfield Oil Co. acquired a large number of leases and bought still others from individuals who had purchased leases. As a result, Richfield acquired more land than any other company.

Ongoing interest evident

The creation of the wildlife range and the continued existence of NPR-4 limited industry entry to just the acreage lying between the Colville and Canning rivers.

In 1976 Congress placed NPR-4 under the management of the U.S. Department of the Interior and renamed it the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPRA, in the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act.

During 1975 and 1976, the federal government still demonstrated its ongoing interest in exploring the North Slope with an extensive program of seismic surveys and exploration. Five or six wildcat wells were drilled in the Foothills province of the North Slope and one at Cape Halkett in the NPR-4 by the U.S. Navy.

All of these tests were dry holes, but they did have some significant shows of gas, with minor oil shows. Potential areas believed to contain multiple oil and/or gas reservoirs are situated on the continental shelf northeast of Point Barrow-Cape Simpson area; in the Beaufort Sea, from Prudhoe Bay to the Canadian border; and the coastal plain area north of the Sadlerochit and Romanzof Mountains to the Arctic Ocean within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The highly prospective onshore coastal plain encompasses some 2 million acres about 100 miles to the east in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.