Word: oiling
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This grim possibility could be avoided. Some of the oil companies, even before leasing their rights, went to costly lengths to respect the land. Instead of using trucks to transport equipment, for example, Atlantic Richfield Co. lifted rigs over the fragile country with giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters. For its part, the Federal Government says it will enforce water-quality standards in the area. Because it owns vast amounts of the North Slope as yet unopened to oil exploration, the Government is in a position to insist upon whatever guidelines it can devise to control development and minimize damage...
Last week part of that treasure produced a scene reminiscent of the land-rush days of the old West. At stake was not land or gold, but oil-an estimated 5 billion to 10 billion barrels -that lies below the tundra of Alaska's North Slope. Gathered in a concrete auditorium in Anchorage, executives of 50 oil companies bid for the right to explore for oil along a 140-mile coastal stretch of state-owned land. When the bidding ended, Alaska was richer by $862,297,961.05-more than has been mined in yellow gold in the past...
Steam Screen. The great Alaska oil rush has been building momentum ever since January 1968, when an Atlantic Richfield Co. drilling crew struck pay dirt 8,700 feet below the tundra at Prudhoe Bay, on the Arctic Coast. Since then, 22 drilling rigs have been brought in, and their crews have sought to duplicate that feat, often working in minus 65° weather and braving 100-m.p.h. winds. The land that they explored was open range until last week's sale of leases, and maintaining secrecy was as important as keeping warm. Companies hired helicopters to spy on competitors...
...keep competitors from learning the size of their bids, the oilmen in the Anchorage Westward Hotel reserved rooms on either side of their own and the rooms above and below. A favorite joke around town went: "Are you in oil?" "No, I'm incognito." One company wrapped its bid in aluminum foil in case a competitor had an exotic camera capable of taking pictures through a manila envelope. Another consortium, headed up by Continental Oil, hired a private train at $12,500 a day to ply back and forth between Calgary and Edmonton for four days while executives prepared...
...auditorium at 3 a.m. to witness the spectacle. Between the time that oilmen presented their bids before 8 a.m. and the first results were announced at 10:28 a.m., Miller had a captive audience that any politician might envy. The Governor made the most of his opportunity, leading the oil executives through the Alaska Flag Song, introducing fellow Alaska politicians and screening a color film on the state. The audience was then treated by self-styled Bard of the Arctic Larry Beck to a recital of all 30 dreary stanzas of Black Gold. A sample couplet: "They made their...