Economic Analysis of Future Offshore Oil & Gas Development: Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, and North Aleutian Basin

• Main Authors: Goldsmith, Scott, Cuyno, Leah, Kovacs, Kent, Mundy, Nancy, Bunger, Anne, McCoy, Terri
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Northern Economics (in association with ISER) 2009
• Subjects: potential economic benefits; oil and gas resources; Outer Continental Shelf; estimates; fiscal systems; local and state government; Chukchi Sea; Beaufort Sea; Chukchi; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/12207

This study describes and quantifies the potential economic benefits to the State of Alaska and local communities from developing oil and gas resources in Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) areas. The findings of this study are not predictions of the future for Alaska, but rather they describe a reasonable approach that one might expect for OCS development. The findings also provide a basis for thinking about potential actions that state and local governments, industry, and other stakeholders might undertake to deal most effectively with the effects that do occur. While there have been other studies in the past that looked at the potential effects of OCS development, this study is based on more recent information and represents the current state of knowledge in OCS resource estimates, exploration, development, and production activities; recent technology improvements; and state and local government fiscal systems. The economic benefits described here are based on assumptions about when and how OCS development, as well as other economic development in the state, might occur during the next 50 years. The magnitude of the economic effects of OCS development are contingent on assumptions about petroleum prices, volumes of OCS resources that might be economically recoverable, the levels of investment that the petroleum industry would be willing to spend to develop in the OCS areas, and the fiscal regime or tax structure that would be in effect as OCS oil and gas development occurs. Shell Exploration and Production