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Schlottman heads to Alaska
in 1953 with Phillips’
first exploration team The greenhorn geologist’s first task was to find bear guards for the camp; he graduated to radioman and mapmaker
Jen Ransom PNA Staff Writer
When greenhorn geologist Al Schlottman first came up to Alaska with Phillips Petroleum Co. in June 1953, his first task had nothing to do with oil exploration.
“I was sent up earlier (than the rest of the geologists) to Cordova to find bear guards,” said Schlottman. “I just sat down at a bar and ask if anyone wanted the job.”
Schlottman said that a couple of guys were interested, and they were hired right there in the bar, with a handshake. One million acres to explore A few months earlier, on Feb. 6, 1953, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior had approved one million acres of federal leases for Phillips on vacant public domain lands along Alaska’s southern coast in the Katalla-Yakataga region.
Known for its oil seeps, more than 50 wells had been drilled in the area by other oil companies between 1901 and 1932, of which approximately 18 wells produced oil at Katalla.
The producing wells were within an area of approximately 60 acres and produced oil from fractured sandstone and siltstone of the Katalla formation at depths ranging from 360 to 1,750 feet. Most of the productive wells were on the Katalla Claim 1 patented under the placer mining law prior to the enactment of the oil and gas leasing law.
Recorded production in the Katalla area amounted to 153,922 barrels of oil over 30 years. During this period, the refinery near the Katalla field provided petroleum products for local use in Katalla. Oil production ceased in 1933 when the refinery was destroyed by fire. It was never rebuilt.
Phillips, along with its partner in the project, Kerr-McGee Oil Industries of Oklahoma City, sent the first geological field parties to Alaska in June.
Schlottman managed to get a spot in one of the surface exploration groups. He had just graduated from Washington State College in New Jersey and was in a Phillips training program in the swamps of Louisiana. Longing to get out of the muggy weather, Schlottman jumped on the Alaska opportunity after reading about the acquired leases in Time Magazine. Geologists need bear protection “I wrote a letter to the president of the company and asked if there was any chance of going up to work in Alaska,” Schlottman told PNA in May 2002. “I got in trouble for writing directly to the president, but it worked.”
A few short months later, he found himself in Cordova, hiring bear guards.
Schlottman said he didn’t realize the true need for the guards until he went for a walk around town. During a stroll past the city dump Schlottman saw a number of bears wading through the garbage. He then quickly hired three bear guards, and then they were off to Icy Bay. Setting up camp Under the direction of head geologist Phil O’Rourke, geologists Norman Mundorf, Robert Hickman, Charles Darling, Arnold West, Keith Calderwood and Frank Turner, a handful of workers and Schlottman headed out to the Katalla camp. The group headed to Icy Bay a few days later, where the surface exploration group would set up a small camp as a base of exploration.
Schlottman said it was quite rugged, and Icy Bay seemed untouched when they first showed up.
A landing ship tank (L.S.T. craft), the Pacific Islander, was beached to bring supplies, and the first week of exploration was dedicated to setting up camp. Food, equipment and fuel were flown into camp by a chartered aircraft, which carefully landed every week on a makeshift landing strip on the beach outside of camp.
Schlottman’s official title in the surface exploration group was as an associate geologist, but he said that was just a fancy term for O’Rourke’s assistant.
While Schlottman would occasionally go out in the field, most of his duties included keeping the maps up to date and keeping radio contact with Yakataga.
Schlottman would normally use the camp’s short-wave radio to contact the larger Yakataga camp. Yakataga would then relay his messages to the outside world.
Schlottman said that the radio work was rather frustrating due to the conditions, and recalls one of the few times he was able to maintain contact directly with Anchorage.
“There was a volcano going off,” he said. “I could hear the ashes landing on the roof of Anchorage’s radio shack during our contact.”
Schlottman’s summer in Alaska was just what he was looking for, though not what he expected. He left that summer considering returning the next year, but also considering that maybe someone else would like the experience. He never got the chance to make the decision.
Not long after his adventure at Icy Bay ended, Schlottman got a letter of his own, from the United States Army. He had been drafted. Because of his radio experience in Icy Bay, Schlottman was sent to the Aleutian Chain as a radio operator.
Once out of the Army, Phillips sent Schlottman to Billings, Mont. But he longed to get back up to Alaska, and the chance came during a tragic moment in the history of Phillips Alaska exploration. Exploration office needs assistant There had been no success in drilling in Icy Bay, but oil exploration in Cook Inlet and the North Slope looked promising. The Anchorage exploration office had opened in 1955 and Schlottman’s old exploration party leader Phil O’Rourke was the head of the then two-man office.
In 1958 O’Rourke’s assistant was killed in a plane crash in Kodiak, tragically leaving the job open. O’Rourke contacted Schlottman to see if he was interested in coming back to Alaska. Schlottman quickly agreed.
Only a year later the office was upgraded to division headquarters, and more geologists joined O’Rourke and Schlottman in Anchorage. His duties were mostly as a photo geologist; he would take aerial photos of Cook Inlet almost daily. He spent some summers in the field doing exploration on the Alaska Peninsula. Schlottman worked in Alaska until 1964, when his adventurous spirit called out for a change.
“I wrote another letter to someone high up,” Schlottman said.
He ended up in Europe on the North Sea. His work with Phillips, and the ability to write convincing letters, took him from Libya to Trinidad, Venezuela to Morocco and beyond.
Schlottman is now retired from Phillips, residing in the state of Washington.
Next week: A look at the life of a field geologist at Phillips’ Katalla camp in 1954; plus a record of Phillips first drilling in Katalla-Yakataga region.
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