Drill onshore, not offshore

In New Mexico where the feds owned everything below the surface, our Texaco geophysical crew (locally called doodlebuggers for a variety of mostly obscene reasons) had federal license to do pretty much as we pleased, including in one instance I vividly recall of us sneaking out before dawn and setting off three massive charges that knocked down the surface owner’s adobe house, from the wreckage of which he came at us with everything he had, a battered old pick-up, a crushed Stetson and a Model 94 Winchester 30-30. It was touch and go for a while, but in the end the lawyers settled it. That was the way it worked. Apparently it still works that way.

I have worked in and around the oil industry ever since, once running an oil field service company at Prudhoe Bay, twice trying to build one and then another massive gasline from Prudhoe Bay across Canada to the South 48, and for the past twenty-five years trying on behalf of the City of Kaktovik to open the 1002 petroleum reserve of the Arctic National Wildlife Range/Refuge to oil and gas development. Partly I do it because I really like the industry, at least those in the industry who do the serious work. I was never too keen on our lawyers, but then I am not too keen on most lawyers.

And so I look at this retreat with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am relieved that my clients in Kaktovik are spared whatever grief would come to them from this obscenely ridiculous leasing. On the other, I am sad for the boys and girls who intended to do whatever they intended to do out there. That part I never quite understood, what they intended to do, nor do I expect did they. It is in the nature of the beast to take on things they should have better sense than to do, like dump his house on top of an armed New Mexico cotton farmer. Or decide they would ship hot oil out of Prudhoe Bay on a supertanker and then through a pipeline buried in permafrost. That was, you may recall, the way the oil industry intended to do it and would have had not the USGS pointed out that it would not work. But sometimes it does, like the time they had some exploration money left over from futile attempts to find oil in the Arctic Foothills, and just for the hell of it drilled a hole at a place called Prudhoe Bay, where nobody expected they would find anything. They had to spend out that money. Otherwise, you don’t get future funding. And, of course, they had to drill much deeper than made any sense in order to dump all that money, down the hole, as we say.

So I was not surprised that these characters decided to lease and drill those OCS prospects. How would they market it? Who knows? What would they do if they had a very probable spill? Who knows? At least they did not want to tell us how they would handle any of that. Instead they flew in their B.S. team, the glad-handing flacks to say everything would be fine. Trust us. We have done this all over the world. We know what we are doing. In any event, the feds would not allow us to screw up. Just as they didn’t allow us to knock down that cotton farmers house. That was a federal lease too, fully permitted.

But now we have a chance to do something sensible, develop the 1002, where it is safe to drill, where we really do know what we are doing, where it is not another crazy adventure.

Dr. Karl Francis has served on the faculties of the University of Toronto and the University of Idaho College of Mines. He was Director of Environmental Affairs for the Alaskan Arctic Gas Pipeline Company and geotechnical consultant to Northwest Alaska Pipeline Company and their PMC Fluor Engineers and Constructors. He has worked in and around the Canadian and Alaska oil and gas industry for over four decades. He has advised the City of Kaktovik on oil and gas issues and served as their advocate in Washington, D.C.