Road To California -- October 15, 2018; Fact-Checking Alaska Data

COP: From SeekingAlpha, COP loves Alaska crude.

ConocoPhillips has a major understated presence in Alaska. As a source of roughly half a million barrels per day of conventional oil production, Alaska’s upstream sector is highly profitable. During the worst of the 2014-2017 downturn, ConocoPhillips still churned out $4 million in net income from its Alaskan division in 2015 and $319 million in 2016.

That grew to $1.466 billion last year, which is better put as an adjusted $684 million (excluding major tax benefits and impairment charges).

In the years to come, ConocoPhillips is likely to keep posting higher and higher net income generation from its Alaskan division. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

The reason I re-posted the above? From the same linked article:

Another huge factor in Alaska's favor is the ability to realize Alaskan North Slope pricing. The Alaskan Department of Revenue's website notes that ANS West Coast pricing was roughly $9/barrel higher than West Texas Intermediate pricing on October 11, 2018. This is due to Alaskan oil producers being able to sell all of their output to international buyers as warranted, which means buyers in Washington state and California need to be prepared to pay Brent-ish prices if they want Alaskan oil barrels.

Alaska crude trades at a $9-premium to WTI -- and California is a big buyer of Alaskan crude.

Alaska: the writer of the SeekingAlpha article above says, about Alaska:

There is another key factor working in Alaska's favor readers need to keep in mind. On May 21, 2013, Alaska’s state government passed SB 21 into law. Most importantly, this law stimulated exploration and production endeavors in an effort to reverse Alaska’s multi-decade long oil production decline. Guess what, it worked. From 2014 onward, Alaska has slowly been rebuilding its upstream sector as its crude oil production rose each year over the past three years, according to the EIA (and this growth will likely continue through 2018 onwards).

I must be looking at a different EIA site than the Seeking Alpha contributor. Here's the EIA data for Alaska field production:

And the EIA data for Alaska north slope (ANS) production:

Alaska field production is flat and ANS production is actually less than what it was in 2013.

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Road Trip

Shoshoni, WY, to Thermopolis, WY, October, 2018