“This is the story of the first full scale exploration for hydrocarbons on one of the most foreboding corners of our planet…” So begins the 1970s promotional film THINKING COLD, presented by Husky Oil N.P.R. Operations, Inc., and produced by Pendleton Productions of Anchorage, Alaska. The program covers the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and developments in oil exploration on Alaska’s North Slope. The film includes scenes of Camp Lonely (a logistics center for remote oil drilling sites), seismic crews at work on the windswept tundra, construction workers building snow and ice roads in winter, Rolligons hauling loads of materials, and archaeologists for the Bureau of Land Management conducting studies at excavation sites. Those interviewed include: James W. Dowden, Phil Jeans, Bill Jenkins, Sally Van Horn, Arnold Palenske, Alan Dalby, Carroll Livingston, John Schindler, Mike Kuntz, Bobbie Hendricks, Thomas Brooks, Philip Smith, Jack McCarthy, and Sam Hewitt. The film is narrated by Robert Magruder, directed by George E. Lukens, Jr., and co-written by William Lane and Larry Sullivan. Principle photographers are George Lukens, Jeff Mart, and Bill Bacon. (Color/Sound/16mm film).

This sequence contains excerpts from AAF-20588 from the Bovee Historical Film collection held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives Department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. For more information please contact the Alaska Film Archives.

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