Women’s Instrumental Role In The Early Days Of Alaska’s Oil And Gas Industry

“It was an opportunity women my age could have only in Alaska,” Joey Roth, a veteran senior drilling engineer for Shell, says of working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) in 1976. “They didn’t care if you were a woman or black or green; they just needed people to do the job.”

It’s been 45 years since the number of workers on TAPS peaked at 28,000, according to the Valdez Museum History Archives, and at times women comprised as much as 10% of the workforce (higher than the 8% mandated by law at the time). Thanks to the Hulu miniseries, Mrs. America, there is renewed interest in the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), ratified by Alaska on April 5, 1972, which, in part, enabled these women to contribute to the history-making Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Sculptor Malcolm Alexander (1924 – 2014) illustrated the diversity of the TAPS workforce with the bronze sculpture he completed in 1980 that stood at the entrance of the Valdez Marine Terminal until 2017 when it was moved to Kelsey Dock. Comprised of five figures, including an engineer, a surveyor, and a welder, the statue features a female Teamsters member as well as an Alaska Native (minorities made up 14 – 19% of the TAPS workforce).

With the end of an era, as BP prepares to pull out of its Alaska operations (BP Pipelines, Inc. owns slightly more than 48% of TAPS) and Hilcorp takes over, it’s vitally important that these stories be preserved.

Author Carla Williams arrived in Anchorage in 1974 and writes, “A summer’s folly turned into 40 years.” Although construction of TAPS had been completed in 1977, the lure of high-paying jobs in the petroleum industry was still attracting large numbers of young people to Alaska.

“Most of us were idealistic,” she says. “We were opportunists and we didn’t care how we were perceived. Woodstock had happened and we were in this huge baby boomer generation that was [energized] even more by being in Alaska with this big project.”

Trained as a bookkeeper, Williams originally worked in the office for oilfield service joint ventures, working her way up to office manager/controller. She later became an engineering aide, eventually working herself into a lead engineering position on drill site projects “due to the scarcity of engineers in those days.”

“Every week, you could look at your paycheck and say, ‘Wow, I made this. I workedhard – seven days a week, 12 -14 hours a day – but it’s worth it.’ How many jobs could women say that about? [Opportunities] were few and far between where women could actually be proud of the money they made, money they earned and deserved.”

Even then, neither she, nor the women she would go on to profile in her book, Wildcat Women: Narratives of Women Breaking Ground in Alaska’s Oil and Gas Industry (University of Alaska Press), thought they were “special in any way, shape or form; [we] were just doing [our] jobs.”

It wouldn’t be until the late ‘90s when she “tagged along” with a friend to a conference in Las Vegas – “more of a gathering of pipeline workers” – and heard some of the older women talk about their days on the North Slope oilfields that she had “the first spark of recognition that there might be story there.” She began interviewing women in 1997 and would spend 18 years recording their stories. She found something remarkable in each.

Irene Bartee, who worked on the North Slope starting in the late ‘60s, tells of being flown to Kurparuk and not being allowed to disembark because there were no women there at the time. She eventually became a pilot herself and Williams marvels at Bartee’s ability to fly in Alaska’s famous “white outs,” not knowing where the runway was. “She was in the situation a few times in her life and it didn’t seem to faze her.” She also held her own against Jesse Carr, one of the top Teamster bosses at the time. “She had a lot of . . . ” Williams searches for the right word, “determination in getting her point across.”

Kate Cotton, who worked on the cat train and drove a Delta over the frozen tundra, talks about working in temperatures with 110 degrees below zero wind chill factor. “It’s hard for people to understand the barrenness, the isolation, and the loneliness,” some of the women had to endure, says Williams.

Rosemary Carroll, who had been working in Trading Bay as a roustabout, changed her plans, unbeknownst to her family, and took a later flight from Kenai to Anchorage to start her first day on the Slope. Tragically, the plane crashed and killed five of the seven people onboard, ensuring that day in 1987 was seared forever into her mind. Carroll went on to have a successful career as a control room board operator and says, “What a time it was and what a ride it’s been.”

Williams and her husband, whom she met in the mid-80s on a PRICE/CIRI construction project on the North Slope, retired in 2014, to Sedona, Arizona, where she is a hiking guide. Having been in the extraordinary situation 45 years ago of being paid the same as her male counterparts – equal pay for equal work – she now hopes young women coming into the industry will have the same opportunities.