In This Issue

New Oil on the North Slope

August 2026

In mid-May it was 19°F and windy at the Aurora Hotel in Deadhorse. As I stood in the parking lot surveying the surroundings, I chatted with a gentleman from Texas who works for Nabors Alaska Drilling and was in town as part of a crew tasked with getting a previously inactive drill rig up and running. He said that, according to his supervisor, spring is the windy season on the North Slope. The gusts were bracing, numbing the fingers holding my camera, but most of my attention was focused on what I could capture through the lens: work trucks, shipping containers, buildings obscured by snow whipped up by the wind.