ExxonMobil in Alaska: Exxon selects Prudhoe discovery well site

Humble Oil assumed an unusually active role as Atlantic Richfield’s 50-50 partner on Alaska’s North Slope in the 1960s

Steve Quinn

For Petroleum News

For years, Exxon subsidiary Humble Oil & Refining Co. was a footnote to Prudhoe Bay’s history.

That’s what happens to partners on an oil exploration and production project; they take a back seat to the field operator.

The operator, in this case Atlantic Richfield (predecessor to ARCO), gets the credit. The partner, in this case, Humble Oil, gets a passing mention.

It’s an accepted way of life in the oil industry.

But the role Humble played on Prudhoe Bay’s development as the company was being folded into what is now Exxon Mobil Corp. cannot be understated, according to those who worked on the North Slope of Alaska.

Humble brought money, technology, field expertise and some moxy from members of the exploration team to the lucrative partnership that helped produce the first discovery well.

Without this convergence, a dry hole might have been a final word, at least for a while. “When the time came to make a press release, Humble at the best was a small print,” said Crandall Jones, who served as Humble’s Alaska division exploration manager following the discovery. “It always stuck in our craw.

“Humble’s engineers had a lot of input. They worked with ARCO very closely on what to do next.

“Everybody thought it all this was ARCO’s doing. Humble selected the location of the discovery well,” which led to ARCO’s 1968 Prudhoe Bay discovery announcement.

Neither Jones nor other former Humble employees want to revise history or even grab ARCO’s headlines; they simply want to fill in a few blanks.

That starts with the key discovery well.

“ARCO wanted to drill a well quite a few miles south of Prudhoe Bay,” Jones said.

“Being the operator, they got a rig in there and drilled it pretty deep — 10,000 feet.

“And it was a dry hole. The question then was, where do we go from here.”

That’s where J.R. Jackson Jr., Humble’s Alaska division exploration manager before Jones, entered the picture, said Jones and others of those years.

Jackson reviewed structural maps from seismic work previously completed. He detected what’s known as an anticline, or a dome, almost football shaped.

If there were oil and gas — and they typically were together, Jones said — it would migrate to the dome and be trapped there.

So Jackson pleaded his case to Humble’s board of directors in Houston, Jones said.

“They weren’t hot on it, but he sold them,” Jones said. “He and the exploration management team convinced them it was worth while to have one more try.

“That one more try was a discovery well. If it hadn’t been for Humble, there may not have been any Prudhoe Bay.”

Hank Repp, a field geologist for Carter Oil in the 1950s before it became part of Humble, says Jones’ recollection is spot on.

“This was a real challenge, since in 1966 Humble joined with ARCO in the drilling of a very expensive dry hole in the foothills of the Brooks Range,” Repp said.

“In spite of this failure J.R., was able to convince the management in Houston to jointly drill the Prudhoe Bay wildcat,” Repp said. “They agreed to drill “one more” wildcat on the North Slope.

“Since ARCO was the operator, Humble’s attitude was to remain as supportive of their decisions and yet provide as much technical and financial advice as needed. Crandall was very effective in dealing with ARCO at the time.”

With the expertise, came money.

Humble nearly dropped out of Alaska exploration in the late 1950s. Richfield, though bullish on the North Slope, needed money as it prepared to bid on various leases.

It was to be part of the state’s first North Slope lease sale, and it was December 1964.

Humble brought as much as $5 million to the table, including $1.5 million in cash before the lease sale.

“Humble brought a lot of money in, and had the financial wherewithal possible for exploring on a much more active basis,” recalled Gil Mull, a geologist with Richfield who went to work for Humble before the Prudhoe discovery well was drilled.

“The infusion of cash brought in by Humble was pretty important because Richfield was pretty small and sort of under-capitalized.”

Money also meant backing for more surveys.

“After the partnership came on, we ran seismic lines farther up north,” Mull said.

“They were definitely participating in the field work, field interpretations. Both companies participated, providing personnel for it.

“Humble was definitely there with us. There were two of us from Richfield and two of us from Humble.

“We spent two full field seasons together doing seismic in the Brooks Range, and they brought a lot,” Mull said.

With investment came an education on what it took for Humble’s management team to do business on the North Slope.

A visit to northern Alaska from offices in Texas and California required several commercial flights and a charter.

Like many from the Lower 48 states, the first trip to the North Slope remains memorable.

Jones arrived after a long journey from Southern California.

“We took regular airline to Fairbanks, then we got on a charter — a twin otter — with two turbo props with about 15 seats,” he said. “It was a magnificent flight.

“We flew over the Brooks Range and onto the North Slope. It had small lakes and quite a few rivers all flowing out of the Brooks Range and into the Arctic Ocean.

“We were up there in the summer time so the ocean was free of ice. It was a beautiful place.

“We landed on an airstrip near the discovery well. It was shut in. We didn’t have any place to put the oil yet. They made the strip.”

As he got to know Alaska, he saw the logistics challenge behind getting equipment to the Arctic.

“I had a feel of what went on; it was just harder and more expensive to do it,” Jones said.

“You came through the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, then into the Arctic Ocean in the summer. It was a window that didn’t last too long.

“They were waiting for the ice to melt; when it melted then they could go on down to Prudhoe Bay, then tie onto shallow water.

“We also had cargo planes that you could load on an entire rig taken apart. It was much cheaper if you could plan ahead and go around the Bering Strait.

“We had to do everything we could to preserve the environment. We bent over backward.

“That was one of the key things: don’t mess up the environment. I think we did a good job.”

More than 40 years later, Jones still reflects on a task that some he believes takes for granted: getting the oil off the North Slope.

“The wells were shut in until we figured out how we would get the oil to market,” Jones said.

“There was discussion about whether it would go through Anchorage or even Canada.

“I don’t think anybody thought there was any other way of doing things. If you ask me, it was a remarkable piece of engineering.”