Alaska is a land of mystery, and a state that is the subject of as many misconceptions as there are people who have not spent a considerable amount of time there. Now people know something about Alaska’s governor, and a little about the oil industry in Alaska, because of the current focus on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, better known as ANWR.

In the last few years, I’ve spent several months of every year outside of Alaska. The things I hear from people I’ve encountered convince me that very few of them know the truth about either its governor or ANWR. Whether you are interested or not, both issues are, or may be, of national significance.

This is not a story about Alaska’s governor – I’ve already done that. This is a story about drilling for oil in Alaska. I worked in the oil industry in Alaska for thirty years. I went from the drill floor to the boardroom, and I did it during the dramatic growth of the oil industry in “The Last Frontier.”

Don’t expect this to be an article that preaches to you about supporting drilling in ANWR. This is a presentation of the truth as I know it. I simply would like for people to hear something other than blatantly distorted anti-development dogma. I worked in the oil industry, but I am an Alaskan who cares about responsible development of our natural resources.

Early on, I want to state that very few people in the world have any idea of how much oil there is in ANWR. Most estimates are generally in the neighborhood of 10 billion barrels, making it one of the last and biggest “elephant” oil fields (100 million barrels or more) left in the U.S.

With special permission from Congress, Chevron was permitted to drill the “KIC No. 1″ well south of the village of Kaktovik on land owned by a Native corporation in the winters of 1985 and 1986. It is the only well that has ever been drilled in ANWR and the results of that well are still a closely guarded secret. Because Chevron, in partnership with BP, owns the only leased acreage inside the 1002 Area of ANWR, and they have zealously (and legally) protected that information for over twenty years, oil insiders assume it is an elephant -a very big elephant.

In a light-hearted bar conversation, I once asked Tom Cook, Chevron’s longtime Alaska Exploration Manager, how much he had been offered for what he knows about ANWR over the years. He politely batted my question aside, and I quickly realized what a serious subject that would be to anyone in his position.

Have you bought a case of bottled water lately? The case I just bought had twenty-four sixteen ounce bottles of water in it (three gallons), and it cost me four dollars. That equates to fifty-six dollars per oilfield barrel for water – for water! An oilfield barrel equals forty-two gallons, and right now oil is trading for around fifty dollars per barrel.

From a barrel of oil, we get gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), naphtha, kerosene, jet fuel, asphalt, engine oil, other lubricants, plastics, synthetic fibers, synthetic rubbers, detergents, fertilizer, perfumes, insecticides, and up to four thousand other byproducts. From a bottle of water we get “water.” Okay, I agree that comparison is not exactly “apples to apples,” but it may mean something to you after you read what follows.

My first trip to Prudhoe Bay was on January 6th, 1975. When I arrived it was around fifty degrees below zero. I was a “worm,” an oilfield term for somebody brand new on a drilling location. The plane was unloaded using a Cat 980 front-end loader, and the pallets with our bags on them were set on the ground outside the terminal. The small space inside the terminal was crowded with serious looking men who were bundled up in heavy parkas and insulated coveralls. All of them were wearing bunny boots and insulated hats with ear flaps. It was a surreal scene to a nervous “worm” – and I knew I looked like one.

Not knowing any better, while waiting for someone to pick me up, I was there long enough that everything in my bag was frozen solid – even my toothpaste.

It takes big men and big iron to drill wells in a hostile environment like the one that exists on the Arctic North Slope of Alaska – and lots of money. It’s a fascinating industry, driven by extreme competition and extreme diversity. The possibilities for huge financial losses are every bit as real as are the possibilities for huge financial gains.

Beginning in 1975, I worked as a mud engineer on drilling rigs on the North Slope and all over Alaska – but that is another story for another time. By the time I retired, I was the manager of one of the largest oilfield service companies in Alaska, giving me a very broad look at the oil industry in Alaska.

I know we have to develop alternative sources of energy, and the quicker we do that the better. I also know that we will need oil for the foreseeable future, and we need to use it responsibly during the considerable length of time it will take to fully develop viable new sources of energy. I can’t visualize jet airplanes flying on something other than jet fuel for many years to come. It should concern everyone that we are doing tremendous damage to our economy by sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign countries for oil. Many of those countries are actively using our money to try to undermine our success and our way of life. We are also forcing U.S. oil companies to drill ultra-expensive deepwater wells while we neglect easily available onshore prospects like ANWR.

I know about drilling in the Arctic environment and I know about ANWR. Well funded environmentalists and anti-development activists have done a masterful job of portraying ANWR as a pristine place with beautiful mountains and trees and wild animals cavorting everywhere. There is a part of ANWR that actually looks like that, but it is a long way from the coastal plain, and 8 million acres of it have already been designated as a Wilderness Area.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers 19 million acres on the northern edge of Alaska. The area on the 1.5 million acre coastal plain where the oil companies want to drill is as flat and barren as a tabletop. There will never be vacationers visiting this part of ANWR. In the summer it is so mosquito infested that you can barely breathe, and in the winter the temperatures (during the fifty-six straight days of darkness) can often reach over 100 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor. There is nothing that a tourist would want to see, and there never will be.

Because of advanced technology in horizontal drilling, the oil industry is only interested in using four thousand surface acres on the coastal plain of the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That is like looking at a tiny dot on a sheet of letter-size paper. A very short pipeline could tie ANWR production into the Trans Alaska Pipeline easily.

Developing ANWR should be a no-brainer in today’s economy, but stubborn, anti-development factions often have their positions presented by famous people who have never visited ANWR. They are convincing the American public and politicians, including our new President, that developing ANWR is the wrong thing to do.

Some common arguments against developing ANWR are:

• “Drilling in ANWR cannot produce enough oil.” The idea that ANWR, or any other oil find in the U.S., is going to satisfy all of our energy requirements is ridiculous. On the other hand, potentially adding 1.5 million barrels a day to U.S. oil production speaks for itself.
• “It would harm the environment.” All resource developments impact the environment. The modern oil industry is probably the safest, most environmentally responsible, and most regulated industry in America. The impact of development on four thousand acres of the most remote, most barren land in America would be minimal.

The National Audubon Society has earned over $20 million by allowing the oil industry to safely drill wells in the Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Louisiana using many of the technologies that were developed on the North Slope of Alaska.

The population of the Central Arctic caribou herd near the Prudhoe Bay oilfield has increased sevenfold since development began in the mid-1970s.

• “It would not result in lower oil prices.” This is probably a valid argument because the price of oil is controlled by world supply and demand. Gaining a little more independence from foreign suppliers is the salient factor.
• “There are other places to drill.” With the exception of the recently discovered oilfield in North Dakota, other places to develop in and around the U.S., particularly deep-water locations, continue to become more challenging and more expensive to drill.

And when compared to the price of the water I bought. . . Just something for you to think about.

This article was originally published on April 2, 2009 at the news and commentary website JustOneOpinion.com. This is another of several articles that I’ve submitted. This article has generated a great deal of discussion there and I would like my readers to comment as well.