Alaska's first oil strike came in 1902 at Katalla, on the Gulf coast. Small finds and dry holes followed for half a century, until the Swanson River discovery in 1957 and Prudhoe Bay in 1968. Press play and each well appears on the North Slope or around Cook Inlet in the year it was spudded.
Alaska's oil comes from two regions hundreds of miles apart, with little drilling between them. Instead of one mostly blank statewide map, this page draws the two regions as panels side by side: the North Slope on the left and Cook Inlet on the right. Both panels share one clock, so the slider and the play button move them through the same year.
Each dot is a wellbore, placed at its surface location and shown from the year it was spudded. Older wells are dim and newer wells are brighter. A well stays on the map after it is plugged and abandoned. The chart under the map counts wells spudded per year, and the tall bars are drilling booms.
Before 1957 the map shows few wells: a handful of wildcats around Cook Inlet and, from 1944 to 1953, the Navy's test wells in Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 on the North Slope. The Navy found oil at Umiat and Simpson and gas at Barrow. In 1957, Richfield's Swanson River discovery on the Kenai Peninsula opened Alaska's first major commercial oil field and helped make the economic case for statehood two years later. The Cook Inlet panel fills in through the 1960s as offshore platforms go up.
After the Navy program, the northern panel adds only a few wells until 1968, when Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, is confirmed on the Arctic coast. After the pipeline opens in 1977, North Slope drilling expands quickly: Prudhoe, then Kuparuk, then smaller satellite fields spreading west toward the Colville River. Drilling peaks in 1985 and output peaks in 1988. Since then the slope has matured, with fewer new wells, each one longer, reaching toward the western reserves.
Each dot is a wellbore from the public database of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC): one dot per well with surface coordinates and a recorded spud date (completion date where no spud is recorded). This map covers Alaska's two producing regions, the North Slope and the Cook Inlet basin, which hold most of the state's wells. Remote wildcats elsewhere (the Aleutians, the Interior, and the Gulf coast, where the 1902 Katalla field stood) fall outside both panels and are described in the map notes rather than shown as dots. Historical milestones are drawn from the Alaska Oil & Gas Historical Society, USGS, and contemporary accounts.
Before a well is drilled today, the operator has the title examined to find who owns the minerals and who will be paid from production. That work covers severed estates, old deeds, leases, pooling and royalty math. This site explains how it is done.
Start learning mineral title →