Anchorage Daily News

The oil industry wants to remind us how big it is in Alaska.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Association published a study on Monday detailing the jobs, total payroll and tax revenue generated by Alaska's oil and gas industry last year.

The report updates a study of 1999 oil spending and taxes published by the association and The Alliance, a trade group for oil service companies. Both studies showed that oil spent more on payroll than any other industry in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Valdez, the Kenai Peninsula and Valdez.

In 1999, North Slope crude oil sold for $18 per barrel on average. This year North Slope crude has averaged $111 a barrel, with a price of $139 on Monday. With the skyrocketing oil prices, oil industry employment, spending and the state's reliance on oil taxes have boomed.

"Obviously, we remain a driving force in the economy, contributing the vast majority of state revenue," said Kara Moriarty, AOGA's deputy director. In 2007, oil and gas revenue accounted for 88 percent of Alaska's general fund.

Her group fought recent tax increases targeting the oil and gas industry, the most recent of which was approved by the Alaska Legislature last fall. As a result of the tax law revisions and high prices, the state's oil revenue could jump to $10.2 billion in the fiscal year that ended Monday, double the amount from a year earlier, according to the study.

Here are some of the study's key findings on jobs and payroll:

• The industry generated 12 percent of the state's private-sector jobs and 21 percent of private-sector payroll.

• Oil and gas activities in Alaska created 41,744 jobs (roughly 9 percent of all jobs in Alaska) and $2.4 billion in payroll (roughly 11 percent of total wages in Alaska).

• Oil company pay averages $12,737 per month, three-and-a-half times more than the statewide average wage of $3,627 per month.

• The industry directly employed 1,649 Anchorage residents with total direct wages of $295 million.

• The oil and gas industry gave more than $28 million in charitable contributions in 2007, not including individual contributions by company employees or in-kind gifts.

• In 2006, 72 percent of oil and gas industry workers were Alaska residents and 74 percent of the oil industry's payroll was earned by Alaska residents. In Alaska's private sector, overall, 77 percent of jobs were held by Alaskans who earned 84 percent of the total payroll.

The report underplays the importance of oil to the state's economy, said Scott Goldsmith, a senior economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute for Social and Economic Research. For example, the oil industry bears most of the state' tax burden, reducing the household costs for all residents and enabling other industries to avoid higher taxation, Goldsmith said.

Unlike some other major Alaska industries, such as fishing and tourism, the oil industry operates year round and is a "great stabilizing force" for the economy, he added.

The oil association hired two Alaska consulting firms -- Information Insights and the McDowell Group -- to produce the 62-page study. The researchers' data sources included purchasing and payroll records for the major oil and gas companies, results from an survey of oil and gas company vendors, and statistics from the Alaska Department and Labor and Workforce Development.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.

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