Alaska's North slope: the state's most-northern region and an economic powerhouse.

• Author: Barbour, Tracy
• Position: REGIONAL REVIEW

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Alaska's North Slope is legendary for its severe weather, rugged wilderness, exotic wildlife and, of course, abundance of petroleum.

The resource-rich area that most Alaskans simply call the "Slope" is a Utah-size swath of tundra sweeping down from the Brooks Range to the shores of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The frigid temperatures of the region allow for only a surface "active layer" of the tundra to thaw each season. Consequently, most of the soil is permanently frozen year-round.

The North Slope region contains the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the east and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) located in the western Arctic. At 23 million acres, NPRA is the largest single-block of land in the federal estate.

The region also contains the nation's largest oil field: Prudhoe Bay, which is responsible for 36 percent of the state's oil production. Since the field came on stream June 1977, production has averaged more than 1.5 million barrels of oil and gas liquids per day for over a decade. Today, Prudhoe Bay has produced more than 10 billion barrels of the 25 billion barrels of original oil in place. Other major North Slope oil fields include Kuparnk--the country's second-largest, Alpine, Milne Point and Liberty. Alaska North Slope gas represents the largest, known, undeveloped gas resource in the United States.

Alaska's North Slope Borough, the largest county in the United States, encompasses almost 90,000 miles. It is home to about 7,400 residents, nearly half of whom live in Barrow. The rest are spread out in the villages of Anaktuvuk Pass, Atqasuk, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright. The scarcity of roads to any borough village or between the villages makes traveling through the remote region difficult. Consequently, travel as well as freight to and from the region and to the villages is done by air.

OIL FUELS SLOPERS ECONOMY

The oil and gas industry, along with government, drive the economy of the North Slope and the state. As much as a third of the state's current economic activity is in some way connected to oil, according to a September 2008 Alaska Economic Trends article by Neal Fried, Alaska Department of Labor economist. Oil revenue makes up 88 percent of the State general fund's unrestricted revenue. And the stream from oil revenue could reach an estimated $10 billion to $14 billion for fiscal year 2009.

Employment from the oil and gas industry has a...