Between 1902 and 1926 the federal government had set aside 54 million acres as national parks and wildlife refuges. All the rest was potentially subject to Native title. However, Congress had never made any treaties with Alaska Natives.
When the original engineers sat down to design the pipeline, federal geologists and environmentalists noted that unique obstacles, including permafrost and earthquakes, would challenge the idea that the pipeline.
With 75% of the 800-mile pipeline passing through permafrost terrain, the engineers came up with three principal redesign plans to fit the needs of each particular area.
There were only two police officers patrolling Fairbanks when the Trans-Alaskan pipeline project arrived on the scene. J. B. Carnahan was one of them. Then, almost overnight, the sleepy town of Fairbanks became a boomtown.
Different conservation groups had different objectives, but the 800-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline project rallied the environmental community in a way no other project had done before.
Almost all Alaskan oil production is on state-owned land, so the state receives revenue from four different sources: production tax, property tax, royalties and corporate tax.
In 1968, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A.) announce the discovery of a massive oil field in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's northernmost coast, in the frigid Arctic Circle.
