A Hilcorp gravel-mine permit reflects the North Slope's expanding oil footprint

Hilcorp Alaska wants to open a new gravel mine in the Putuligayuk River area of the North Slope — a mine site and an access road about 1,000 feet long. The company says it's needed "for continued oil and gas development, as current gravel sources are being depleted throughout the North Slope." The public has until Aug. 18 to comment.

Everything the oil fields are built on — the pads, roads, airstrips and pipelines — rests on gravel, and North Slope development is expanding. Federal energy forecasters expect Alaska crude production to grow in 2026 for the first time since 2017, driven by big new projects like Pikka and Willow, each of which requires its own gravel mines. Hilcorp's permit is one piece of that rising demand.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published the notice Aug. 3. It describes a new site called Put 29 and a road, about 36 feet wide, branching off an established gravel road that serves Drillsite 15. The notice doesn't say how many acres of wetlands or tundra the mine and road would disturb, and it quantifies no effect on subsistence resources.

Gravel placement permanently converts wetlands and tundra. The National Academies of Sciences has documented that the environmental effects of North Slope oil development accumulate across many individual projects, each permitted on its own, with the footprint spreading outward over time. North Slope subsistence harvesters, particularly around Nuiqsut, have long warned that each new road opens more traditional hunting ground to development.

Hilcorp has made that argument before. In a 2024 state filing for Phase II of its Ugnu Mine Site E, the company reported 24.2 acres of new wetland impact, for a Phase I and II total of 50.5 acres, and said no compensatory mitigation was required because the impacts were temporary and minimal. Hilcorp became operator of major North Slope fields in 2020, when the state approved the transfer of BP's Alaska assets.