The costliest mistake in human history is often considered to be Russia selling Alaska to America. This sale was driven by the Russians and the Empire's difficulty in maintaining control of Alaska, facing threats from the British Empire at the time. The negotiation resulted in a purchase price of $7.2 million, equivalent to $123 million today or about 2 cents per acre.
The official transfer ceremony occurred in Sitka on October 18, 1867, with a parade of Russian and American soldiers. The Russian flag was lowered, and the American flag was raised. At that time, Russia was unaware of the valuable resources lying beneath Alaskan soil, and they feared the purchase would threaten British control of their Pacific coast colony.
Approximately 20 years later, in the 1890s, oil was discovered in Alaska. It's estimated that there are around 1.2 billion barrels of oil in the region, along with an estimated 53 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas, making the oil alone worth approximately 85 billion dollars today. To put this in perspective, Alaska is more than seven times the size of the UK.
Prudhoe Bay Oil Field is a large oil field on Alaska's North Slope. It is the largest oil field in North America, covering 213,543 acres and originally contained approximately 25 billion barrels of oil.
The area was originally identified as a potential oil field and selected in the early 1960s as part of the 100 million acres the federal government allotted to the new state of Alaska.
Commercial oil exploration started in the Prudhoe Bay area in the 1960s and, after several fruitless years, a rig produced a natural gas flare in December 1967. The oil field was confirmed on March 12, 1968.
North Slope oil production peaked in 1989 at 2 million barrels per day.
The Prudhoe Bay oil spill was discovered on March 2, 2006, at a pipeline owned by BP Exploration, Alaska in western Prudhoe Bay.
Initial estimates of the five-day leak said that up to 267,000 US gallons were spilled over 1.9 acres, making it the largest oil spill on Alaska's north slope to date.
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