Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Oilprice.com has announced discovery of 1.2 billion barrels of oil on Alaska’s North Slope, which they expect will revitalise Alaska’s oil industry.

Huge Oil Find Could Save Alaska’s Oil Sector

By Nick Cunningham – Mar 10, 2017, 1:30 PM CST

Spanish oil firm Repsol SA just announced the largest onshore oil discovery in the U.S. in three decades, a 1.2 billion barrel find on Alaska’s North Slope. Repsol has been actively exploring in Alaska since 2008 and finally hit a big one.

The find came after drilling two wells with its partner, Armstrong Oil & Gas. Repsol says that it if it moves forward and develops the project, first oil could come by 2021. The field could produce 120,000 bpd, a significant volume given the predicament the state of Alaska finds itself in.

Alaskan oil production has been declining for decades. After BP’s massive Prudhoe Bay oil field came online in the 1970s – the largest oil field in North America – Alaska’s oil production shot up. But the field saw its production peak in the late 1980s at 1.5 million barrels per day, after which it went into long-term decline.

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