;)
Today I stepped out onto the street and started to walk, no destination in mind, curious to see where I might wind up or who I might see.
I had not gone more than 100 feet before Richard and Arlene Glenn pulled up in their truck and invited me to tag along. We went to a few spots, including the landing site where yesterday's whales had been butchered and the boat launching site out towards Point Barrow.
Then we wound up on the Gas Well Road, where we saw this truck coming in the opposite direction. We passed over what looks to the eye to be ordinary, flat Arctic Slope tundra but which is actually the site of a crater where a meteor once blew out a crater about six miles wide. The rubble in the "disturbed" ground left behind in the crater trapped the concentrations of natural gas that now make up a portion of the Barrow Gas Fields, owned by the North Slope Borough, tapped to supply affordable energy to Barrow.
;)
This is Richard, whose Iñupiaq name is Savik, and he is the nephew of Savik, the same Savik whose kitchen table I sit at as I write these words, Savik who opens his house to me as he does to his own blood family. Savik, the nephew, is a geologist and serves as the Vice-President of Lands and Natural Resources for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation - although right now, his heart is out here, where a new gas development is being produced.
Behind Savik stands the rig drilling the new gas well named Savik #1 and there will also be Savik #2. The well goes down 1000 vertical feet, then turns and is being drilled another 4000 feet horizontally beneath a layer of sandstone that sits atop the field of natural gas it will tap.
Sandstone crumbles easily and its fragile nature would make it problematic to drill the well straight through to the gas reserves.
Afterwards, Richard and Arlene took me to their house, where we ate rice smothered in caribou gravy, rich with big chunks of meat.
I just now asked Savik the uncle why they named this new well after him.
"I never asked," he answered.
The drilling rig pictured here is owned by Kuukpik, the ANCSA village coporation of Nuiqsut.