Alaska

Last year the Alaska Legislature made a controversial change in the oil production tax, the state’s largest source of oil revenue. The old tax, known as ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share), was replaced with MAPA (More Alaska Production Act, or SB21).  Critics and supporters of the change strongly disagree about which tax structure would benefit Alaska the most over time—and in August voters will decide whether they want to keep or repeal the new tax.

The Alaska Energy Statistics final report for 2011, by ISER researchers Ginny Fay and Alejandra Villalobos-Meléndez, is now available. It is the most recent update of annual reports funded by the Alaska Energy Authority. It examines how much electricity individual utilities generated in 2011 (the most recent year for which complete data are available), with what types of fuel, at what electric rates, and with what level of CO2 emissions.

Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, has updated his estimate of how much Alaska's state government can afford to spend each year, without risking sudden big budget deficits and economic hardships for Alaskans, as it deals with declining oil revenues. 

Download the paper .

ISER has now launched the Alaska Energy Data Gateway, a new online database with energy data—most of it at the community level—from across Alaska: https://akenergygateway.alaska.edu/  The site provides data from many sources, through a single access point. The data can be downloaded in a variety of file formats. 

Alaska relies much more on air and water transportation than the Lower 48 states do, so it's especially vulnerable to the kinds of fuel price spikes that happened in mid-2008 and again between 2009 and 2010. A new report analyzes how higher fuel prices affect the costs of transportation in the state and work their way through the economy. It is the first study of this kind for Alaska. The authors are ISER economists Ginny Fay, Tobias Schwörer, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Jeffrey Armagost. 

Alaska's state government can afford to spend about $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2014 (July 2013 to June 2014). That's the most recent estimate of the level of General Fund spending the state can sustain over the long run, from a new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER. The $5.5 billion figure is based on the state's current petroleum nest egg of about $149 billion. The nest egg is a combination of state financial assets (the Permanent Fund and cash reserves) and the value of petroleum still in the ground. 

A new analysis by Scott Goldsmith, professor of economics at ISER, estimates that Alaska’s state government currently has a petroleum nest egg of about $155 billion, including both the value of revenues from oil and gas yet to be produced and money already in the bank. The state can afford to spend about $6.2 billion a year from the earnings of that nest egg for decades to come, taking population growth into account. But this fiscal year, the state is expected to spend close to $7 billion—shrinking the nest egg for coming generations.