THE LINK: JULY 2024 30 For decades, when Alaskans spoke of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they usually spoke of Roger Herrera. As a BP geologist, Herrera took an early and personal interest in ANWR’s coastal plain and was more responsible than anyone in keeping its prospectivity in the minds of Alaska’s state leaders and in Congress. He also became a well-known advocate on Capitol Hill. “I counted 40 times I testified before congressional committees — it may have been 50,” Herrera said. Even on retirement from BP, he soldiered on to help found Arctic Power, the Alaskan group that lobbied for years in Congress to get the coastal plain open. What was the motivation? “For me, it was a promise broken,” by Congress after Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, now deceased, secured language in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act that the coastal plain of the refuge would be set aside and studied for its oil and gas potential as a prelude to leasing. ANILCA also required a vote on Congress to actually lease lands in the coastal plain for exploration. Herrera and other Alaskans were in the middle of that. They came within a whisker of getting that approval, only to have then-President Bill Clinton veto the congressional approval. As years passed, hopes seemed to fade, but in 2019 Alaska’s congressional delegation seized an opportunity to tack the approval onto President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation then moving through Congress. An ANWR lease sale was held, and leases were awarded. But new President Joe Biden signaled any permit applications to do work were dead on arrival. Biden was good (bad) to his word. Herrera’s career in Alaska was about more than ANWR. As a young geologist in the early 1960s, his field work helped lay the foundation for BP’s North Slope exploration, which led ultimately to the discovery of Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil find in North America. BP had tasked its geological team in Alaska with assessing the potential of the entire state including regions like the Kuskokwim and Yakutat, where BP drilled a well that proved unsuccessful. BP really had its sights on the North Slope, however, even as the rest of the industry focused on Cook Inlet. There is a story in BP that what first got the company excited about Alaska was when a senior BP director, flying to Tokyo on one of the first trans-polar flights, looked down and saw a North Slope landscape strikingly similar to the Zagros Mountains of northern Persia (now Iran) where BP had made major discoveries. On his return, the director (Herrera doesn’t recall the name) ordered that Alaska’s potential and the North Slope in particular, be assessed. That’s what got Herrera to Alaska in 1960. It wasn’t just table-top geology. There were three years of field seasons with a team of BP geologists out all summer. “We tracked down every oil seep we could find in the literature, and then went to visit many of them. Some were quite large,” he said. The team heard reports of heavy equipment that bogged down in oil-soaked beach sands east of the Canning River, in what is now ANWR, but the oil source couldn’t be located. It was a great life for young geologists. Dinner was often Arctic Char fished from tundra lakes. But there were hiccups, too, including times stuck overnight when weather came down and the helicopter couldn’t get in. Herrera recalls one cold and wet overnight when the team hiked to a nearby coal outcrop and lit it, making a fire to keep warm. Some of the rocks being gathered in what is now ANWR’s coastal plain were so oil-soaked they could be set afire, too. That helped inspire Herrera about the coastal plain potential, verified in more recent years by the U.S. Geological Survey and others. Another lease sale is planned by the government in late 2024 under terms of the federal tax act. The Biden administration could make the lease terms so onerous as to discourage bidding, however. It may be a while before the coastal plain potential is really tested. Herrera now lives in Anchorage, and he still believes discoveries may be made in ANWR someday. — Tim Bradner Herrera had key roles in Alaska exploration Photo by Lee Leschper
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