After years of steady decline in production and bottomed-out oil prices, Alaska is in a rough spot. They’re over a billion dollars in debt, in large part thanks to unfulfilled cash incentives to oil companies, and now many of their remaining oil producers are pulling out at the same time that the North Slope and Cook Inlet oil fields face thousands of layoffs . Over the last three decades the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which peaked back in 1988, has been steadily draining. Where 2.1 million barrels oil once flowed through daily, now 500,000 barrels trickle through. Older oilfields in Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope have long since been drilled dry, with onetime powerhouses like Prudhoe Bay, the Kuparuk River and the Alpine now nearly out of commission. But all hope is not lost. Now, after an executive order from U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, the U.S. Geological Survey […]