But oil and gas development is a long game. Mark Squillace, a professor in natural resource law at the University of Colorado, said offshore development is expensive and time-intensive. And regardless of what’s happening in the short term, the tide is heading toward renewables. That provides a lot of uncertainty in the long run.
In some ways, Alaska’s market is unique. It’s always been expensive to produce in Alaska, and big oil and gas companies like Shell and Chevron, left the inlet long ago. The region hit its oil-production peak half a century ago, and much of that was from onshore wells. “I think that the efforts to lease more oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico — you probably won’t see quite the same level of disinterest that we saw in the Cook Inlet sale,” he said. “But certainly I’m not expecting there’s going to be a huge rush to develop leases in that area, as well.”