Division of Oil and Gas takes budget hit

Director Ken Boyd says travel, unfilled positions, remote hearings, North Slope inspections to be cut

Kristen Nelson

PNA News Editor

A petroleum geologist position and accounting technicians and clerk positions will be left unfilled as the Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas absorbs cuts in the division’s budget.

Ken Boyd, director of the division, said that the governor had asked for a $100,000 addition to the division’s budget, but the Legislature denied the increment and cut the budget $100,000 from the previous year. Boyd said that 93-94 percent of the division’s budget is salary costs, and the Legislature did not identify what should be cut. In addition to cuts in specific divisions, the Department of Natural Resources also was cut — an amount that then had to be spread between the department’s divisions. The result, Boyd said, is $208,000 less than the division requested.

What will be cut? Boyd said the $8,000 will come out of travel. That could mean fewer trips to Juneau, fewer remote hearings and a reduction in the number of North Slope inspections.

The division has an open slot for a petroleum geologist, and Boyd said that position, which would have worked on issues related to the acquisition of ARCO Alaska Inc. by BP Amoco p.l.c. and units and satellite fields, will be left open.

Boyd said that there are also accounting technician and clerk positions vacant and some combination of those positions will be left open for some period. Because the division handles a lot of paper, he said, the result will be that higher-priced people will be doing a clerk’s job.

The division’s annual “Historical and Projected Oil and Gas Consumption,” won’t be published. The forecast has to be done, Boyd said, for in-kind oil sales, but there is no requirement to print a report. The division is obligated, he said, to produce a five-year oil and gas lease sale schedule every other year and will continue to do that.

And, he said, the division won’t be running display ads for lease sales, because while legal notice is required, display ads aren’t.

On the capital fund side, the division received $100,000 to contract some of the work for best interest findings for the Interior basin exploration licensing program (see story page A21). The division talked to Buy Alaska and the Alaska Support Industry Alliance and has requests for proposals going out to gather data for the findings, Boyd said.