The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay intensified pressure to resolve land claims quickly.
In 1968, massive oil reserves were discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope. Transporting this oil required a trans-Alaska pipeline crossing lands subject to unresolved Native claims. This discovery transformed land claims from a legal ambiguity into an urgent economic and political problem that demanded resolution.
Prudhoe Bay is widely understood as the immediate catalyst for ANCSA. The urgency it created helps explain the compressed timeline, the emphasis on finality, and the limited opportunity for alternative governance models to be seriously considered.