Review by Jim Barkdull
Petroleum Geologist
In my opinion Prudhoe Bay should be required reading for geology majors as it is so complete a treatise on what exactly is first class exploration geology. It is also part Jack London and part Indiana Jones. And best of all it details what few folks in our country and around the world actually know about Alaska North Slope Exploration. There are more than a few politicians who would benefit from reading it as well…
— Jim Barkdull
This is the story of early adventurers sleeping under wolf skin blankets, shivering while trekking across ice and tundra in 1900, and whose findings ultimately led their followers along the greatest path of petroleum exploration geology. Atlantic Richfield Company, ARCO, followed this path and found the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, biggest in North America and probably never to be surpassed on land.
John M. Sweet has written the first history of the Prudhoe Bay oil discovery. This is the inside story that lets you experience the cold, the logistics, and years later, after the decisions are made to drill or not to drill, you are given a pass into the boardrooms you are a mouse in the wall. If you are an exploration petroleum geologist as I am, you soon realize that this is a page-turner. But for the non-oil folks, John successfully treads the line between the reader off the street and geologists who were not involved. “For the man on the street I tried to give enough Geology 101 for them to understand what oil exploration is all about.
John Sweet’s book begins with a bang with a foreword by Walter J. Hickel, Alaska’s second governor, who says, “This is the story of one of the greatest adventures of the twentieth century.” That is putting it mildly. John’s beginning simply states the obvious, “The inside story leading to the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field has never been told.” Readers will be surprised that there is much to be learned.
John’s has organized his book into 16 chapters, each in itself a comprehensive short story characterizing the steps, taken in historical order of the geological studies of northern Alaska, beginning in 1900 with oil as the ultimate objective, and which headed to the discovery — the ARCO-Humble Prudhoe Bay State No. 1 “spudded” on April 22, 1967 at 7:30 in the morning.
Included maps, geological cross sections and photographs provide the reader with visuals of the early surveys and surveyors, explorers, scenery, rivers, mountains, and concomitant color photos that take you into the 60s with planes, mountains, roads, and the exploration folks. The reader will be especially entertained while viewing photo #18 on page 216 – a picture of a large rock to wit: Photo 18. A large example of a large oil-stained rock from the Arctic National Wildlife Area (ANWR). Hmmmmmmm! (The Hmmmmmmm! is the reviewer’s.)
There is no more entertaining reading of a true adventure fully documented and realized in this book.
Note: Mr. Barkdull is a petroleum geologist living in Colorado.
------------------------------------------------------
Adventure permeates a new title on the shelves of the bookstores. It is also the history of one of the most significant economic enterprises to occur in the 20th century, Discovery at Prudhoe Bay. AtlandticRichfieldCompany “ARCO” and Humble Oil beat discouraging odds, and expense to discover the largest subsurface accumulation of oil on the North American continent.
The author John Sweet and former Atlanttc Richfileld Company Geologist, weaves into a mosaic the pieces of fabric of many individuals who were among those who made success possible. One lived a hermit like existence on an Island in the Beaufort Sea for six years. Many lined canoes, wading to their shoulders at times in water with floating ice. Another group thought surely they were destined to starve to death, or freeze, in winter weather, but in summer clothes.
At the end of WWII the Navy and USGS explored for, and found non-commercial oil in Naval Petroleum Reserve Four. A few years after that program finished the oil industry took up the hunt in 1958 and by January 1. 1967 had drilled 11 dry exploratory wells. ARCO and Humble faced the uncertainties. Readers will learn how they beat the odds. |
