he Trans Alaska Pipeline System is an iconic image of Alaska and the oil industry. Because many sections of the pipeline are easily accessible and traverse stunning Alaska landscapes, it’s often photographed and is instantly recognizable. In fact, when looking for oil infrastructure images in Alaska, more often than not the challenge is finding an image of anything else.

So Alaskans may be less familiar with other vistas of the state’s oil industry (if that’s the case, make sure to check out “Images of Infrastructure,” a photo essay of Alaska oil field infrastructure we published in October 2021). For Alaska Business, even more rare are opportunities to look at oil and gas operations around the world.

Alaska is one of the largest producers of oil in the United States, which is the largest producer of oil in the world, a position it’s held since 2018, yet we’re nowhere close to being alone in delivering oil to market. Worldwide private and publicly-owned entities conduct their own exploration and production activities, all of which feed into a vibrant global oil market that—as Alaskans well know—can be unpredictable and influenced by innumerable economic, political, and social factors.

It may feel like Alaska is isolated, and often we are, but the influence oil has on our economy incontrovertibly ties us to the rest of the world. In the following pages, we have selected several oil operations from around the world that demonstrate how different oil operations can look—and how much they all have in common.