The Workings of An Oil Field

The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company was a consortium of nine major U.S. oil companies. And each of them sent a certain number of their executives to Alyeska for the construction phase of the Pipeline.

This meant men from each of the nine oil companies had been placed in management positions spread out across the North Slope of Alaska. They would spend a few weeks working in Alaska, and then work a few weeks back home, and then return back to Alaska again.

This meant that there was a continual rotation of executive officers, and, in practice, it was a very effective system. A man was not subjected to the rigors of the Arctic all the time, but would come back refreshed and able to perform with top efficiency while his alternate was relaxing in the lower 48 states or at Anchorage.

Most of the relaxing was done at Anchorage, rather than taking the arduous trip to the south at very regular intervals. It is relevant that the top executives in the oil company would work one week on and one week off in rotation. The further down the ladder you went, the longer they stayed on the job and the less time they had at home. By the time you got to the ordinary worker on the Pipeline, he was expected to stay on the job for six or seven weeks at a time, to go home for one week, and then to come back for a further six weeks.

The top executives would always overlap each other for one day, so that there was constant briefing and debriefing. It was thereby insured that the work would proceed without undue problems. Lindsey Williams spent a lot of time in the offices, and at no time did the executives object to the fact that he was present when they were talking about activities that were proceeding.

There were, of course, the common problems such as theft, with the usual attitude of, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Some people are anxious for financial gain; others are more interested in a power structure; and when it comes to the political arena, that power structure might go way beyond mere money. It is possible to relate this to the oil fields, and to see some semblance of comparison with what is taking place in Canada.

Canada has already nationalized its oil companies. That is an actual fact of history, and this was often referred to by executives of the oil companies working for the Pipeline. The oil company officials in the top echelons have suggested that the Federal government wishes to nationalize the oil companies of America.

The heading of this chapter is “The Workings of an Oil Field.” It is relevant to emphasize that the United States government, as such, did not own anything —equipment, machinery, buildings, or anything else—on the oil fields. Not one penny of government money was invested in the Pipeline, yet the government exerted all sorts of pressures as they implemented their multitudinous rules and regulations. Neither did the oil companies own all of the equipment, for in many cases the work was subcontracted, and often the machinery was owned by the company to whom the work was contracted.

Many of those who had been there for comparatively short periods of time had no idea as to what had gone on before they had arrived, or as to the way certain activities developed. Over and over again the very nature of the field demands training that is simply not available anywhere else.

The dorms in which the men lived in the camps were very well appointed. There were two men in each room in a 52-room section. Men shared common baths in these common dormitory areas. During the first year of pipeline construction, it was not unusual to have steak and lobster twice a week.

The food was always in plentiful supply, being available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The men did not pay for their food, nor did they pay for their candy bars or pop. They simply took all they wanted.

The largest paycheck Lindsey Williams has seen for seven days of work was over $3,000 for an ordinary working man.

Reference: http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-the-energy-non-crisis-chapter-6/

The Barges Froze and Cracked and Popped

In 1971, the oil companies had first proposed the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.

At that time the projected cost was $600,000,000. That was the anticipated figure in 1971, but before it could actually begin in Alaska, the government stepped in and said, “No, until more surveys are undertaken, and more guidelines have been laid down in such areas as the protection of the ecology, you will not build the pipeline.”

The nine major oil companies of America had hauled that big pipe from Japan to Alaska. It is interesting to notice that the pipe itself had been built in Japan, because prices were already beginning to go so high, even back in 1971. By that time it was cheaper to buy it abroad and ship it across the water to Alaska. So it was that an American bank financed a Japanese steel company for the purpose of building the big pipe for the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.

While the pipe was actually bought and made in Japan and then shipped to America, it had to be stored from 1971 until 1974 in pipe yards—in Fairbanks, Valdez, and Prudhoe Bay—three sites in Alaska. Then in 1974, the pipeline began to take shape: the government had issued their permits, surveys had been made, the ecology had been studied from 1971 to 1974, and an entirely new method of building the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline had been devised.

At that time inflation was beginning to cut even deeper into the American economy. There was an increasing spiral of inflation in the early 70′s-up to that time the prices remained more or less the same year after year. When the pipeline began to be initiated in 1974, the cost estimate was no longer $600,000,000 (600 million dollars), but $2,000,000,000.

In 1971, the figure was $600, 000,000—America needed the oil at that time, but there was no energy crisis. Nevertheless, the country needed oil and private enterprise could produce it. However, the oil was on government-owned land, and so the project was stopped until government had their say. In 1974 the project cost was $2,000,000,000 for the cost of that pipeline. Now we reach 1976, and the oil company officials were saying that, because of cost overruns, the total cost of the oil pipeline would probably exceed $12,000,000,000.

There was an underlying force that was attempting to control both the oil companies and the flow of oil. From 1976 on, frustration began to be intensified. Permits were withdrawn, even though they had been issued for the entire time of the construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline, and had been promised as such by the Federal government.

Regulations were being intensified—there had been plenty of time in two years to update the regulations by which the government controlled the whole operation, in such matters as the protection of the environment.
The government was not putting one penny into the entire project.

92% of all the land in Alaska is owned by the Federal and State governments. Only 8% is owned by individuals, so the oil is on government-owned land. So it was that the oil companies were told what they could do, in very great detail.

Lindsey Williams remembers Mr. X saying that the oil companies were allowed to to produce oil for the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline from only one 100-square-mile area of the North Slope of Alaska. Mr. X had said that all of the land north of the Brooks Mountains included many pools of oil—it was there in vast quantities beneath that North Slope. Nevertheless, private enterprise and the oil companies of America are allowed to produce from only one of those pools.

A large flotilla of barges that were brought each year from the West Coast of the lower 48 states, bringing all the supplies and equipment necessary for the Prudhoe Bay oil field. Each year, one of the highlights was when the flotilla of barges came in. They brought everything, from the big pump stations to the flow stations to the pipe itself. They brought in vehicles, dormitories, and everything necessary in the way of large construction equipment, such as drilling rigs … and on and on. They brought in everything that was needed for the work of producing oil from the fields at Prudhoe Bay.

Then in 1975, the weather just simply did not cooperate. That flotilla would have to wait until the Arctic ice had left the ocean. The flotilla would usually stand for weeks at a place called Wainwright. They would wait for the ice to move at Barrow, and then they would have only a few days in which to get out. People would hear the message, “The ice is moving! The wind is moving from north to south—there’s a shifting!” So they would move out into Prudhoe Bay.

Finally the ice broke just long enough for the flotilla to come around by Wainwright and Point Barrow. Then it arrived at Prudhoe Bay, but something was wrong—the ice was barely staying off shore, so the flotilla did not have time to get back out. The ice closed in again, the wind was not favorable, and soon it was clear that the flotilla of barges and the tugboats that brought them in would be stuck at Prudhoe Bay for the winter—they could not get out again.


The equipment was brought in piece by piece, but then there were the expensive barges owned by the companies, and the tugboats that brought them in—how could they be saved? There was really only one way, and that was to build a dock. Why not? Put gravel out into the ocean and dock them on dry land, so that the ice would not crush them in the winter. The Federal bureaucracy cares nothing for time, and seems to care nothing for private enterprise. The fact that they had millions of dollars in equipment tied up there, sitting out in that water, mattered little.

The water was gradually freezing in around the barges, and it would crush all that equipment. They were able to save the tugboat, but the barges were left in the water, because there were some microorganisms on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean at that point, and the ecologist insisted they must not be destroyed by the building of a gravel dock out into the water to the point of the barges.

Lindsey Williams watched, as the big equipment was brought in. They were actually outfitting bulldozers so they could ride the bottom of the ocean and literally go up to the place where the barges were and pull them in. He watched as they stalled, and stalled, and stalled for time. The barges froze, and cracked, and popped. The big steel plates were literally destroyed, and millions of dollars worth of equipment was crushed by ice.

Why? Could it be that the government did not want that flow of oil? Could it really be that there is no energy crisis, except the one they want to produce?

Was it an attempt to frustrate the construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline?

Then came 1976 and the last six months of the construction of the line. At the same time, all across America, there were lines of people standing and waiting for fuel. There was talk of rationing, and yet there was plenty of oil in Alaska, and apparently there was a frustration to prevent it from being used.

In the last six months of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline construction, it seemed that everything went wrong. Suddenly there was another turn. Someone had said that the welding on the big pipe was faulty. Lindsey Williams knew the men, the welders, and the other men who were laboring there.

And then, only months from the completion of the whole project, there was this possibility that the whole big pipe would have to be redone, from beginning to end. Where it went under the river bed it would have to be dug up, and its ecology would have been destroyed. The suggestion was that it be dug up where it had already been laid in the ground under the streams. At this time of the year that would have been almost literally an impossibility, for it would have destroyed the fish streams and the breeding grounds—that was what the ecologists hollered. They insisted, “It can’t be done now-you must wait. After all, we don’t dare touch those streams at this time of year.”

It was clear that a deliberate attempt was being made to stop the flow of that oil, to prevent the whole project from being brought to a successful conclusion—it seemed that the intention was that it would never be produced.

America was told that the oil would leak out onto the ground and would destroy the “precious” tundra. The news media proclaimed that this would be the biggest oil spill ever known on the face of the earth, and it must be stopped.

Reference: http://www.lindseywilliams.net/lindsey-williams-the-energy-non-crisis-chapter-11/