Archive for June 2023

Thomas Smith March 2, 2011Original Story An oil discovery in the Moose Range wilderness on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula would bring a momentous change to the territory and have oil exploration implications far to the north. The discovery in Moose Range was the boost Alaska Territory woefully needed at a time when mining was down and…

June 22, 2017 by Elizabeth Harball and Zoë Sobel, Alaska’s Energy Desk Tom Marshall was a geologist and a land selection officer for Alaska in the 1960s. He was the driving force behind the state’s Prudhoe Bay selection. (Photo by Elizabeth Harball/Alaska’s Energy Desk) You could argue — and a lot of people do — that  Alaska…

Discovery of Prudhoe Bay February 2015 Heather Saucier, Explorer Correspondent Original Story Here It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. But AAPG member Tom Marshall – a geologist who moved to Alaska in his early 30s, enamored by the idea of homesteading in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley – managed to change the future of the entire state with…

Original story Years before Alaska became a state, petroleum exploration companies drilled expensive dry holes. The Alaska Oil & Gas Development Company was among them. The Alaska territory’s first commercial oil well arrived in 1957, two years before statehood. The discovery well, drilled by the Richfield Oil Company – today known as ARCO – successfully drilled…