I miss Nick
Nick would have torn me up on my fracking discussion. Especially on my oversimplification of petroleum exploration. In the old days, that's basically how it was done. But I was talking the very early days. Geologists used the ideas of source rock, transport, reservoir, traps, maturity, structural geology and many other aspects to predict where oil would reside. The science evolved quickly. Now we have 3D seismic mapping, remote sensing, and directional drilling to find "blind deposits".
The USGS probably has a map of Alaskan oil fields, I'll look later.