Think about this: 10 years ago, it looked as if Alaska was on the brink of a tough transition to a post-Prudhoe Bay economy. Oil production was half of what it had once been, the state’s oil revenues were about $2 billion, financial reserves were falling, and employment in the oil industry was down. The price of Alaska oil, adjusted to today’s buying power, was $27 a barrel—and that was high by historical standards.ud-- Things have changed dramatically since then: a combination of much higher oil prices—about $115 a barrel as this paper is being written—and revisions in the way the state calculates production taxes have caused state oil revenues to skyrocket, even though oil production is down 40% since 2002. We now find ourselves in a second huge oil-revenue boom, comparable to the one in the early 1980s (Figure 1 ).
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