BP departure stirs memories

Tis’ the season to remember old friends and the pending departure from Alaska of BP brings back many fond memories for me.

My wife and I came to Alaska in 1967 when I became a reporter for The Anchorage Times. At the time ARCO was drilling what became the discovery well at Prudhoe Bay and the company lured me away two years later for a public relations job — at triple my reporter’s salary.

After the discovery was announced at what was a wildcat location near the mouth of the Sagavanirktok River, BP started drilling on acreage it had under lease nearby. I got a kick out of the fact that BP announced the results of its discovery well.

Usually that term is used for the first well drilled into an oil-bearing formation. What BP discovered was that its leases covered part of the large formation discovered by ARCO, but they were justifiably proud of what they found. And so theirs was a discovery for them.

I have had many friends at BP over the years, starting with my counterpart, Charles Towill, and later Tim Bradner, who is now a well-known journalist. I think Charles is gone now but Tim and I are still friends and are, in fact, working together on the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism, an organization working to increase investigative journalism in Alaska.

I’ve made many friends in my various jobs over the years and one of the first was Hank Rosenthal, who was delivered to Alaska in September of 1969 by the tanker Manhattan. Hank was a public relations manager for Humble Oil, which later became Exxon, and served as PR manager for Humble on the Manhattan’s voyage through the ice-covered Arctic Ocean to demonstrate that tankers could navigate the Northwest Passage.

The hope was that the Manhattan voyage would open the way for shipping oil through the Northwest Passage to the U.S. East Coast. That never happened but someday oil or gas tankers may yet traverse the passage on a regular basis.

ARCO delivered a symbolic barrel of oil to the Manhattan where it was anchored about 20 miles off Prudhoe. A barrel is actually 42 gallons and there weren’t any containers that size so we had to use a 55-gallon drum which had once contained a Chevron product and bore the Chevron logo. It needed to be painted and they asked me what color paint to use. In a flash of brilliance I said “gold” and they did.

When I saw the “golden barrel” being hoisted onto the helicopter I was aghast. The gold paint emphasized every ding and dent on the used Chevron drum. It was downright ugly. The crowd was in a good mood, however, and everybody pretended it was beautiful.

Hank became my good buddy and we hunted and fished together for years. We often traveled together taking news people to see the big new oilfield which was so much in the news.

The Prudhoe field manager didn’t like having news people wandering around so company executives let us take the ARCO Lear Jet to fly back and forth. That way we could get in and get out quickly rather than wait around for the big charter airliner to fly its schedule. It was a hoot for two young guys to have a Lear Jet for our trips. It had a mini-bar for the return trip to Anchorage and the news people were generally congenial.

Hank later married our friend Heather Flynn and, unfortunately, was killed when he and Heather were on a trip to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Hank was hit by an out-of-control taxi that jumped the curb and pinned him against a building. He is one of a number of my friends who have already exited this planet.

So when BP packs its bags and boards its flights south next year, a lot of memories will go with it, memories of bygone days and good friends from my industry days.

On New Year’s Eve I will be toasting the memory of a lot of fine people I have met, worked with and befriended over a lifetime of working in our great state. I’m sure many of you will be doing the same. Cheers.

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