**Title**: Energy in the North - Haley Paine
**Date**: September 11, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Haley Paine


00;00;00;20 - 00;00;08;22 [Haley Paine] I have two small kids, a three year old and a four year old, and I want them to grow up here. And just knowing that a really vital piece of our state's economy is growing and looking to thrive is really important.

00;00;12;07 - 00;00;18;14 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Haley Payne, deputy director for Alaska Division of Oil and Gas. Haley started her energy career as an intern at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, working on renewable energy and then policy and permitting for oil and gas. Haley and her team manage the oil and gas resources on Alaska's state owned lands. And in the past few years, they've been looking at carbon capture and storage on the North Slope. I asked Haley if she remembered when we first met back when she was an intern.

00;00;43;01 - 00;01;01;07 [Haley Paine] Yeah. So I think it would have been about 2013, maybe 2012. And I think perhaps before you first met me as an intern, you first met me as a student who was essentially stalking ACEP and going to every event you guys put on until you finally agreed to hire me as an intern.

00;01;01;07 - 00;01;12;06 [Amanda Byrd] And now you're the deputy director of oil and gas. And when we first started talking today, I mentioned Prudhoe Bay, and your face just lit up. Why is Prudhoe so exciting right now?

00;01;12;06 - 00;01;17;09 [Haley Paine] Well, I think, you know, the North Slope of Alaska right now is just in general really exciting. I think even when I was first starting here, there's this sort of kind of diagram, if you will, of oil production in Alaska. It is, you know, on a pretty steady decline. And there was just this concern or fear or we just kind of marching towards the end of TAPS over the last several years. I think that there's been a huge renaissance and a huge turnaround. And, you know, now when people think about Alaska, they think about really exciting new opportunities. I mean, some of the, you know, the biggest onshore discoveries are being made here, they're being developed in communities that have a really deep engagement with those projects. You know, there's a lot of just stakeholder involvement. There's a lot of sort of ancillary community benefits that are really thought about with this. Just more than that, I mean, I think we're really seeing this opportunity for new projects, new growth in TAPS, you know, ways of new imagining, things that we can do here in Alaska. What kind of projects can we be a part of? And, I mentioned earlier sort of the carbon management piece of that. And so now you're seeing entities that currently exist here now are new companies that want to come in and they're thinking about, well, how can we do our oil and gas development but make it net-zero? And the opportunity to sequester carbon, you know, be that biologically through the trees or storing it deep underground and through the geology, it just really kind of plays a new shift on that. So it's nice to see this, you know, between the projects I've just gotten sanctioned. I mean, the biggest investment and the most kind of pull to get things going. And, I just have two small kids, a three year old and a four year old, and I want them to grow up here. And just knowing that a really vital piece of our state's economy is growing and looking to thrive is really important.

00;03;00;21 - 00;03;04;26 [Amanda Byrd] And, Alaska has already benefited from the production of oil on the North Slope.

00;03;04;26 - 00;03;28;20 [Haley Paine] Besides, you know, our our general funds revenue and I think the division of oil and gas for state lands, the revenue was $1.8 billion last year in royalties that were collected and there would be taxes and everything on top of that. But, you know, besides those direct revenues, the state and I'm sure the oil and gas companies can tell you better than I, you know, the the indirect revenues, the number of jobs, number of people employed and, if you go into any of our university campuses, you're sure to see some of the the the nice buildings and other things which are made possible and yeah so I'm it's really positive to see everything that's been going on there.

00;03;43;02 - 00;03;47;23 [Amanda Byrd] Haley Paine is the deputy director of Alaska Division of Oil and Gas. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power at UAF. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.