Alaska's Petroleum Industry: Transformative, But is it Sustainable

Abstract

Before starting I want to thank Northrim Bank for its longstanding and generous support of the economic research at the Institute of Social and Economic Research and for helping to broadcast the results to a wide audience. That support has allowed us to investigate questions of importance to all Alaskans that would otherwise not have been possible. Now my remarks today have two objectives: First to demonstrate the transformative impact of petroleum on the Alaska economy, and second to answer this question—Is petroleum an industry in decline in Alaska, or can it continue to sustain the prosperity we have come to enjoy and expect, for another 50 years or more?