Article: Over a barrel. (Alaska's oil field service firms)

OVER A BARREL

Falling oil prices pushed oil field work into a precipitous decline that tested the mettle of Alaska's oil field service firms. Here's the survivors' saga.

FROM BARRELS TO BUCKETS. Work in Alaska's oil fields dried up during 1986 and 1987 as oil companies, reacting to plummeting oil prices, scaled back exploration and production activities. The oasis became a desert, parching the operations of oil field support service firms. All could not survive, and most businesses dependent on oil patch revenues downsized, merged, fled the state or withered and died.

Compounding the slowdown in activity was the failure by many businesses to ...

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