A Citizen’s Guide

First: Alaska North Slope crude dropped 91 cents to $93.96 on Thursday.

Then: You know how everyone keeps saying North Slope production is declining? Well, it turns out, North Slope production is declining.

“State legislators in Juneau were told yesterday that the state has lowered its estimate of North Slope production by 38,000 barrels per day for the year, to an expected average daily total production of 732,000 barrels per day.”

The trans-Alaska oil pipeline is pumping 737,000 barrels a day on average so far this year, according to Alyeska.

Low throughput apparently starts to become a real problem somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels a day, because of all sorts of physics issues related to pressure, temperature and the like.

There’s been some talk around Fairbanks that if, say, 400,000 barrels were the minimum amount needed to keep the pipeline active, then we need to be pumping a bit more than that to keep some oil in Fairbanks and North Pole.

It will be interesting to see if Rep. John Coghill brings that up in his town hall meeting in North Pole on Saturday.

And Finally: Production isn’t just declining in Alaska. In West Texas, oil companies are once again making money because of high prices. But unlike the last boom, everyone is hedging their bets this time around.