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Three years have lapsed since drillers struck oil on Alaska's North Slope, touching off a black-gold rush that promised to make the relatively poor state the "Kuwait of the North." What has happened to the promise? To find out, TIME Correspondent Patricia Delaney spent ten days trekking across Alaska. Her report...
...SUMMER is settling in on the North Slope, and the Arctic yellow poppy blooms in riotous abundance at Prudhoe Bay. Near a lone British Petroleum Co. rig, indifferent caribou graze. At the base camp, oil workers grow restless in the 24-hour daylight. Another idle crew waits 60 miles south, near Galbraith Lake, where $4,500,000 worth of unused Cat tractors, bulldozers, graders and pickup trucks stand in precise rows, as in a toyshop at Christmas. Hundreds of miles farther south, at the port of Valdez, workers are beginning to coat stacks of rusting pipeline-400 miles...
...nation's total. In the race to begin drilling, supplies were airlifted round the clock by huge Hercules "stretch" freighters from Fairbanks. Adding to the "boomer" spirit, ARCO, Humble and British Petroleum announced plans to spend $900 million to build a 789-mile pipeline from the North Slope to Valdez. In a frenzy of competition, oilmen bought leases for $900 million-enough to cover all state expenditures at the 1968 rate for 41 years. Delirious Alaskans were told that when production reached maximum levels, the state would receive $200 million a year in oil royalties and taxes. University...
...companies are the biggest losers. They have invested $1.5 billion on the North Slope. Because the oil has not yet begun to flow out, the companies are losing $300 million to $400 million in annual revenues. Complains Ed Patton, president of Alyeska Pipeline, an oil-company consortium: "The costs are increasing dramatically each month. The interest alone on our investment runs to some $90 million annually." Moreover, the final cost of the pipeline may well be double the original estimate and hit $2 billion, owing to inflation and some highly complex engineering difficulties...
...same time an eastward freight sweeps by on the descending grade. After Victorville it is a climb of 1,106 ft. in 19 miles to the summit of Cajon Pass, eerily shrouded in fog. We crawl along, watching for signals looming out of murk, then creep down the steep slope, air brakes hissing, to San Bernardino. Suddenly all is neon lights, freeways, gas stations and palm trees...