A network of pipelines, seen on Aug. 23, 2018, snakes through a portion of the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit on Alaska’s North Slope.
Oil production through the end of the 2020s decade will also likely be lower than what was expected in the department’s previous forecast, released last spring, “but there is an expected increase in production and revenues after that,” Crum said. Counting all sources, the state will receive $220 million less in the current fiscal year and $232 million less in the following year than was expected last spring, according to the forecast.
The state’s total petroleum revenues in the 12 months that ended on June 30 were a little over $3 billion, the forecast said. That total will drop to around $2.2 billion in coming years before starting to rise in the early 2030s. A decade from now, Alaska’s total petroleum revenues will have rebounded – but only to a level about equal to the total in just-completed fiscal 2024. That would not account for inflation.
Crum, at the news conference, explained the shift away from past patterns when oil was the main source of unrestricted revenue.