Alaska North Slope

Within the North Slope, there is a geological feature called the Barrow Arch — a belt of the kind of rock known to be able to serve as a trap for oil.

[2][5] Ira Harkey quotes Noel Wien as stating that in the 1920s, "To keep warm and to cook with, the Eskimo was burning hunks of dark stuff he just picked up on the ground all around his tent.

The petroleum extracted from the region is transferred south by means of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Valdez on the Pacific Ocean.

[2] In 2005 the USGS estimated that the Arctic Alaska Petroleum Province, encompassing all the lands and adjacent Continental Shelf areas north of the Brooks Range-Herald arch (see map) held more than 50 billion bbl of oil and natural-gas liquids and 227 trillion cubic feet of gas.

[9] As of 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated 3.6 billion barrels of oil and 8.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Mississippian through Paleogene strata in the central North Slope of Alaska, which are undiscovered and technically recoverable.

A map of northern Alaska; the dotted line shows the southern boundary of the North Slope. The National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska is to the West, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the east, and Prudhoe Bay is between them.
Landsat 7 false-color image of the North Slope. Along the coast, fast ice still clings to the shore in a solid, frozen sheet. At the top of the scene is the drifting sea ice. A dark blue strip of open water, known as a flaw lead , separates the fast ice from the drifting sea ice. The Brooks Range is visible at the bottom. (June 2001)
Map from the US Bureau of Land Management showing structures that create the oil fields in Alaska
North Slope geologic cross section
Geophysical Service Inc. seismic exploration crew, Deadhorse, Alaska , 1981