Summary

Description

In 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Service funded a contaminants project with the following objectives : 1 conduct a reconnaissancelevel field inspection of abandoned oil and gas exploration sites on the Alaska Peninsula Becharof National Wildlife Refuge, 2 identify and map abandoned physical remains of oil exploration activities and 3 collect soil samples for organochlorine, petroleum, and metal analysis. During the field survey, several sites warranting further study were identified. One such site was Bear Creek Well No., drilled as an exploration well by the Humble Oil and Refining Company now Exxon in the 1950s and abandoned for lack of commercial potential. The well pads still contained a large amount of wood and metal from buildings and machinery used during the exploration drilling. In early 1990, Refuge Manager Ronald Hood proposed to the Exxon officials involved in the Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup that Exxon remove both the debris at the Bear Creek Well No. 1 site and the old culverts under the access road. Exxon complied, removing the debris and most of the culverts during 1990 and 1991. In 1993 Service personnel performed soil sampling at the well pads to identify any residual contamination left after Exxons abandonment of the site. Some petroleum and metal residues of concern were found on the pads. Also, the remains of the reserve pit were found to be eroding into a stream which flows into Bear Creek, an important salmon spawning stream. The reserve pit residues contained significant amounts of barium identified in an earlier report, petroleum, zinc, and a trace of polychlorinated biphyenls. It is recommended that this site be investigated further to determine the extent of the contamination related to the well pads and the reserve pit and the ecological risk associated with this site.