ANWR could bring adventure

The battle over prospective oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is deja vu all over again for this old oil-patch warrior.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed on the ANWR issue but with Joe Biden becoming president next week and Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress it looks grim. At least for the time being.

Right now Alaska’s situation looks a lot like it did in the late 60s shortly after my wife and I got here. That was in August of 1967. We came here as a great adventure a year after we got married. My first job here was as a reporter for The Anchorage Times.

We got to Anchorage in August of that year when Richfield Oil Corp. was drilling a wildcat well near the mouth of the Sagavanirktok River, a sizable river that flows north from the northern foothills of the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean.

In December of that year a small item appeared in The Times saying bush pilots were reporting that Richfield was flaring gas at the drill site. And that suggested the company might have discovered something valuable.

The following March the company — which had by then merged with Atlantic Refining — announced it had made a significant discovery near Prudhoe Bay. Humble Oil and Refining, which later changed its name to Exxon, was a major backer of the venture.

That discovery was a lot like the gold rush. The area had been considered a good prospect for a major discovery so once a big oil reservoir was actually tapped the rush was on. Oil and gas companies were flocking to the North Slope and tapping whatever leases they had. The state held a large lease sale in the area in 1969, one that drew many large companies who put up $900 million for leases on about 450,000 acres of land. The state coffers overflowed.

During that time the oil and gas reporter at The Anchorage Times quit his job and I replaced him. That was a very exciting place to be — right in the middle of the biggest ongoing news story in Alaska history.

One day I wrote something stupid about oil tankers. I forget now what it was. ARCO decided to teach me a few things. They invited me to ride a tanker from Puget Sound to Cook Inlet, which was already producing oil from earlier discoveries.

It was an interesting trip and when ARCO decided to open a public relations office about a year later, I was the only Alaska communications professional they knew. They offered me a job and I accepted, the only time in my life that my salary tripled.

By that time the environmental community was coming unglued about oil drilling in what it considered the pristine Arctic. So the battles were continuous for years. For the most part I enjoyed them.

ARCO had a Lear jet for use by its top guy in Alaska and the company also recognized that news reporters and editors needed to visit the Prudhoe Bay operation. That would give them a firsthand look at what the company was doing there and how clean the operation was.

I was fairly low on the company totem pole but ARCO’s Alaska manager, a guy named Ralph Cox, decided I could use his Lear a couple of days a week to take news people to Prudhoe Bay. That way I could take the newsies to Prudhoe, show them everything and get them out in a matter of hours. That headed off the problems that might arise if we had to wait for the regular charter and the news people had time to wander around and potentially get in trouble. For me, flying in a Lear twice a week with national-level news people was a hoot.

The ANWR leases might or might not lead to new oil exploration and a major discovery like the one at Prudhoe Bay. If it does I hope at least one job goes to somebody like me who could have the adventure of a lifetime.

It could happen.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.