A Citizen’s Guide

ConocoPhillips plans to spend $1 billion on exploration and production in Alaska this year, part of a $15.3 billion capital budget.

Of the seven regions broken out to split $11 billion in exploration and production spending, Alaska is near the bottom, getting less than the Lower 48 ($3.3 billion), Canada ($2.2 billion), the North Sea ($1.8 billion), the Asia-Pacific region ($1.7 billion) and Russia/Caspian Sea ($1.3 billion).

The company only plans to spend $700 million in the Middle East and Africa.

Is the low ranking normal, or a response to tax increases?

Going entirely off of the annual press releases announcing the capital budget for the coming year, we see that Alaska never gets top billing. Alaska always gets more money than it did in the previous year, but also seems to get a smaller piece of the pie.

In the budget for the coming year, Alaska will get just more than 9 percent of the exploration and production budget.

When the company made its 2007 budget announcement last year, it didn’t break down spending in quite such a detailed way, lumping all North and South American projects together. Of the $12.3 billion capital budget for the current year, ConocoPhillips intended to spend $6.5 billion on exploration and production in the Americas.

In the budget for 2006, Alaska got $800 million of the $6.3 billion budget for exploration and production, or 12.6 percent.

In the budget for 2005, Alaska got $700 million of the $5.1 billion budget for exploration and production, or 13.7 percent.

In both 2005 and 2006, the company budgeted the same amount for Alaska and for Canada, but Alaska got more than the Russia/Caspian Sea region and the combined dollars for the Middle East and North Africa.

In all of those years and the coming year, the company announced intentions to spend the money on developing the Alpine satellites and the West Sak heavy-oil field, as well as continued development of Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk.