Amazing Facts About the Oil Fields

Alaska is a huge state. It is one fourth the size of the entire lower 48 states. Alaskans refer to them as the original 48 states, and as “The Outside.”

Alaska is the largest state in the United States, yet 60% of the population of Alaska is in the one city of Anchorage. Alaska has three major mountain ranges; the Rockies, the Kuskokwin, and the Brooks Mountains. As you travel northward over each mountain range, there is a climatic change.

The southeastern coast of Alaska is known as the Osh Kosh, and this area of Alaska is very mild in winter. The Japanese current which warms Washington and Oregon also keeps this area of Alaska mild.

Immediately after crossing the Rocky Mountains into the first interior area of Alaska the winters become severe, going to 50° and 60° below zero. After crossing the second mountain range you come to the Arctic Circle area. The Arctic Circle is an imaginary line around the face of the earth, north of which there is at least one day per year when you have 24 hours of sunlight and another day when the sun never appears above the horizon.

Just north of the Arctic Circle are the Brooks Mountains, and north of the Brooks Mountains is the area to which we are referring in this book as the North Slope of Alaska. The North Slope is a vast Arctic plain, many hundreds of square miles. Generally speaking, it is a flat and very desolate land where there are no trees.

The Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline transverses the entire North Slope from north to south.

The Prudhoe Bay facility is an area where the oil companies are presently producing oil. The North Slope is the entire area north of the Brooks Mountains; Prudhoe Bay is a very small spot in this vast area.

Prudhoe Bay is located adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, and the Prudhoe Bay Field is developed under the auspices of two major oil companies. Atlantic Richfield was responsible for the developing of the entire east side of the oil field at Prudhoe Bay.

BP (British Oil Company), which is a British company, under the authorization of Sohio (which is an American company), developed the entire west side of the oil field.

There were seven other oil companies participating in the development of this field, under the auspices of these two companies. The Alaska Pipeline is the biggest and most expensive project ever undertaken by private enterprise in the history of the world.

When the oil companies began to develop the pipeline route north of the Brooks Mountains, there were no people, no roads, and no towns. There was nothing but a vast Arctic wilderness. This is especially relevant to the problems forced on the oil companies by the Federal and State officials in regard to the whole matter of ecology and environmental protection.

At tremendous cost to the oil companies, entire self-contained cities were flown in by Hercules aircraft and then constructed to house three to five thousand workers each. As there were no people, no roads, and no airstrips, the huge Hercules aircraft landed on frozen lakes in the winter time. The equipment was assembled, gravel pads were built, and the housing units and all life support systems were constructed on the gravel pads. Everything was brought together right there—all electrical systems, water systems, sewage systems—everything had to be constructed on the actual sites.

Hercules aircraft are huge four-engine turbo-prop aircraft, capable of carrying tremendous loads. The entire rear section of the aircraft opens and very large objects can be placed inside. The Hercules was designed by the military during the last World War for the purpose of driving tanks and other military craft directly on board.

In 1974, the cost to the oil companies of one Hercules was $1,200 per hour to rent. Remember, not one penny of government money was used for construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline. It was entirely financed by private enterprise. Animals north of the Brooks Mountains on the pipeline corridor had never seen human beings. The caribou, bear, and Arctic wolves had never seen man and had no fear of man.

Almost every day you would see a survey team sitting in one of the few trees while a bear went by.
North of the Brooks Mountains the ground is known as permafrost, because it is perpetually frozen all year round. In the area of Prudhoe Bay the ground is frozen for 1,900 to 2,100 feet down from the surface.

Yet to the depth at which the oil is produced, which is approximately 8,700 feet, the oil will come out of the ground at 135 °F. Most oil fields in the lower 48 states have to be pumped from the time of their original production, and we are often told that this is a major reason why America imports oil from such places as Saudi Arabia. The argument is that because the Arabian oil is so readily available and so much easier to bring to the surface, it is ultimately less expensive to import the oil than to take it from our own ground.

However, that is not the case at Prudhoe Bay; indeed it is not the case on the entire North Slope of Alaska. After 20 years of production at natural artesian pressure, the oil companies will inject treated water into the pool of oil, and then they can continue production at natural artesian pressure for many years to come.

Though the ground is frozen for 1,900 feet down from the surface at Prudhoe Bay, everywhere the oil companies drilled around this area they discovered an ancient tropical forest. It was in a frozen state, not in petrified state. It is between 1,100 and 1,700 feet down. There are palm trees, pine trees, and tropical foliage in great profusion. In fact, they found them lapped all over each other, just as though they had fallen in that position.

What great catastrophe caused this massive upheaval, and then led to such dramatic changes in the climate? We stress again that everything is frozen—not petrified—and that the whole area has never once thawed since that great catastrophe took place.

It is interesting to notice that tropical ferns have also been found at the Antarctic, and the evidence from these two areas, considered together, certainly suggests that there has been a dramatic change from a worldwide tropical climate to an Arctic climate within datable times.

It is also interesting to remember that the great Arctic explorer, Admiral Byrd, reported seeing tropical growth in near Arctic regions. Just as there can be a beautiful grand oasis in the middle of the desert of Egypt (such as the Fayum Region), perhaps there have been oases in this other kind of vast expanse in the Arctic Ocean area, where these subterranean tropical plants are (for some as yet unknown reason) still growing on the surface.

One day, Lindsey Williams watched as a pine cone was brought up from a well, claiming it looked just exactly as it would look on a young pine tree today. He put the closed pine cone it in an office on the premises of Atlantic Richfield. He simply put it on the desk and left it. The next day, he came back and the pine cone had opened up. The seeds could be seen quite clearly on the inside of the cone.

This was obviously after thousands of years of being in a frozen state, hundreds of feet beneath the surface.
He has had palm fronds in his home which were brought up from some 1,700 feet below the surface.

The tropical forest was between 1,100 and 1,700 feet beneath the surface. The base of the perpetually frozen ground is approximately 200 feet below the depth of the frozen tropical forest. The oil is found at a depth of 8,700 feet, average.

One day, Lindsey Williams was watching an operation proceeding at Pump Station 3, but did not take any special interest. Proceedings like this were going on all the time. However, on this particular day a man whom he personally knew to be very reliable man, came and said something like this: “Chaplain, you won’t believe this, but we were digging in this gravel pit on the Sag River, quite a number of feet under the surface depth. We brought to the surface what looked like a big Louisiana bull frog. We brought it into the building and allowed it to thaw out.”

The man described the way in which the frog was left there and then thawed out. He claimed they actually watched as it totally thawed, and that it then quite perceptibly moved—in fact it appeared to be alive, with those perceptible movements taking place for several minutes. Then the movement ceased, and the men threw the frog away.

At Prudhoe Bay, Lindsey Williams has seen the temperature go low as -130°F (130 degrees below zero).

Reference: http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-the-energy-non-crisis-chapter-5/