It is a harsh but strangely lovely land, home mainly to the grizzly, polar bear, wolverine, caribou, fox, Dall sheep and countless geese and ducks. Mushy and mosquito-plagued in summer, the North Slope area of Alaska is so cold in winter that metals become brittle and men work at a fraction of their normal efficiency. Yet, during the past year, a 140-mile-wide strip of this inhospitable country bordering the Beaufort Sea was the scene of frantic activity as more than a dozen big oil companies conducted seismic tests and drilled exploratory holes in preparation for Alaska's "Great Oil Rush."
"Alaska...