King talks about youthful days with Alaska Pipeline

On the conservative Human Events.com U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, discusses his experiences in the 1970s as a young man working on construction connected to the Alaska Pipeline and relates them to a drilling debate today.

Steve King (R-Iowa) last week shared his personal knowledge of exploration of the North Shore of Alaska. In 1970, King went to Alaska as part of a group hired by an Iowa-based company contracted to build roads for the construction of the Alaska pipeline until efforts were halted by litigation. Mixed in with colorful anecdotes (“When I was signed up they had to pay us $9.75 an hour, which was great wages back in 1970… because the rules then were there was no gambling, no alcohol, no guns and no women. I guess they knew that any combination of those four could cause trouble”) was a detailed, first-hand rebuttal of the absurd argument Pelosi is putting forth claiming drilling will take 10 years to produce results.

King explained, “Back in 1970, environmental extremists filed lawsuits to block the development of the North Slope of Alaska and then, as they went through this litigation, Don Young, when he was elected to Congress, introduced the legislation that cleared out all of the litigation that had stalled all of the development of the North Slope of Alaska oil fields from 1970, ‘71 and ‘72 and most of the way through 73… From the time that Congress cleared the litigation, in 35 months they had oil running from the pipeline ready to load on tankers at Valdez. And that’s after having drilled the wells, set up the collection tubes, built the terminal at Dead Horse, mile post zero at the head of the Alaska pipeline on that end, built 854 miles of pipeline down to Valdez where they built another terminal where they could load tankers and 600 miles of right of way [roads] that I was signed up on to build. All of that happened in 35 months.”

In an Oct. 30, 2002, story, Iowa journalist Chuck Offenburger talked to King about the Alaska experience.

Let’s go back to his own college years, I told him as we began our chat. What was he studying at Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Mo.? When did he decide to quit, and why?

“Well, I was a math major, but I switched to biology and what I really wanted to become was a forest ranger,” said King, who had graduated from Denison High School in 1967. “In the second semester of my junior year, I sent out letters seeking employment that would give me some experience as a forest ranger.”

He learned most western states were hiring only their own college kids, so he took a construction job in his home area in that summer of 1970. He started making good money as he moved from common laborer to blow torch operator to truck driver to an operator of end-loaders. It was enough money that going back to college became less attractive for the young guy.

Then he learned about a construction opportunity on the Alaska pipeline. He was told he could do six-month tours working up there, with all expenses paid and a promise he could bank $50,000 per tour.

“I figured I could do two tours, have $100,000 in the bank and get a good start in whatever I wanted to do,” King said.

About that same time, he got engaged to the high school girlfriend that is now his wife of 30 years, Marilyn, a kindergarten teacher in the Odebolt-Arthur schools.

So for Steve King, back there in the summer of 1970, it was goodbye college, hello life.

But a court injunction stopped the Alaska pipeline project for a time. Finding himself “on hold for about two years,” King began working in road construction and pipeline construction in Iowa and Kansas, driving bulldozers and big earth scrapers.