Alaskan crude production holds while employment falls.

• Author: Klouda, Nolan
• Position: ALASKA TRENDS

To Alaskans who follow the oil and gas industry, the story of falling crude production is a familiar one. Many of us are aware that the state's production has fallen from over 2 million barrels per day at its peak in the late 1980s to a figure closer to half a million today.

Yet as the depressed price of oil dominates the news, it is noteworthy that production in February 2016 was actually higher than one year prior, by about 8 percent according to monthly production figures released by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Indeed, production saw four consecutive months of increases between August and December of 2015 before falling slightly in January and February 2016, according to Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission monthly production reports. This situation is almost the inverse of US crude production overall, where an upward trend in output resulting from hydraulic fracturing was interrupted by price shocks in 2015, according to US Energy Information Administration data.

Of course, the story behind the data is important: fracking activity in the Lower 48--having propelled the United States toward energy self-sufficiency--has slowed considerably since crude prices began falling in 2014. Meanwhile, investments in smaller North Slope fields in recent years (such as the ConocoPhillips CD-5 expansion into the National Petroleum...