Alaska Science Forum

This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Larry Gedney is a seismologist at the Institute.

I came across some statistics from the petroleum industry the other day in the quarterly publication Exxon USA that would make interesting material for an Alaska trivia game. For instance, did you know:

1. In states such as Kansas and Indiana, where wells are shallow and conditions uncomplicated, wells can be drilled for about $30 a foot (which, incidentally, is about the same as drilling a 6-inch-diameter water well in the Alaskan interior). In Alaska, however, drilling costs for an oil well can run as high as $900 a foot.
2. The Department of Energy identifies 27,543 oil fields in the United States. Of these, 220 are classified as giant fields. The giants, numbering less than 1 percent of the total number of fields, account for 61 percent of the U.S. production.
3. Of the giant fields, only three rank as "super-giants." Two of these, Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk, are in Alaska. The other is in Texas. Together, these three fields provided the nation with more than 20 percent of its domestically produced oil in 1983.
4. Even under ideal conditions, the cost of offshore operations can easily run up to 10 times more than those of onshore operations. In Alaska, the cost runs so much higher still that an offshore field which would be regarded as a giant elsewhere might be classified as noncommercial in the Beaufort Sea.
5. As might be expected, Alaska lost out to Texas as the number one oil producer in the U.S. during 1983. The top five producers in order were: Texas, Alaska, Louisiana, California and Oklahoma. What might not be expected is that Alaska didn't even rank among the top five in the number of new wells drilled. Although Alaska's rank is not given, the top six in order were: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.

To put the matter in perspective and partially answer the question of why the U.S. is forced to import foreign oil at all, consider that during 1983, Americans consumed the energy equivalent (in all forms) of nearly 13 billion barrels of oil. Domestically, we produced 3.2 billion barrels of oil, and that just wasn't enough.

Actually, oil per se accounted for only 42.6 percent of our energy requirements, but it was still the largest single source by a wide margin. Natural gas was next with 24.7 percent, followed by coal with 22.5 percent, hydroelectric power with 5.5 percent, and nuclear power with 4.5 percent ("other," including wind, solar, wood and geothermal amounted to just 0.2 percent).

About a third of the oil we used in 1983 came from outside the U.S. Our feeding suppliers were, in order: Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

I seem to recall from my high school days that we were the world's leading exporter of oil. What happened?