With oil development advocates again emboldened by the prospects of cracking open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a big secret that could add to the continuing debate over exploration remains as cloaked in mystery as ever. Experts say data from the KIC-1 well — the only well ever drilled in the refuge — remains the tightest of North America’s “tight holes,” an industry term for top-secret wells. The explorers, BP, Chevron and two Alaska Native corporations — subsurface landowner Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and village corporation Kaktovik Inupiat Corp.— have kept the data hidden, with only a small number of people aware of what the drillers found. Federal government geologists aren’t in the know. The rare Alaska state employee who has viewed the information isn’t talking. But the results from the 1986 well, drilled 15 miles southeast of the village of Kaktovik, could be something of a Rosetta stone, […]