Oil-company seismic data is going public — the price of a state tax credit

Three oil and gas seismic surveys that companies once kept confidential are about to become public, the eventual cost of the state tax credits that paid to collect them. The deal built into Alaska's exploration credit program is straightforward: take the subsidy to shoot the data, and in time that data belongs to everyone.

The state's Division of Oil and Gas said the surveys can be released as soon as early August — two from Apache in Cook Inlet, near Deep Creek and Gray Cliff, and a 2014 3D survey shot across part of the North Slope. All were collected under the credit program, which requires their eventual release.

The timing is what makes decades-old survey data suddenly useful. Cook Inlet, the aging gas basin that heats much of Southcentral Alaska, is in decline — its oil production fell about 8 percent in fiscal 2025, even as the North Slope ticked up 1.5 percent. As utilities and the state warn of a looming Cook Inlet gas shortfall, seismic data that helps companies find what's left, and decide whether new drilling pencils out, is worth another look.

The releases are part of a broader push to open state-held, tax-credit-funded seismic data to explorers and researchers. A bill in the Legislature, HB 257, would go further, making Cook Inlet geophysical data available free to qualified companies and research institutions, except where confidentiality rules or private owners' rights apply.

The data won't be instant. It's distributed through the Geologic Materials Center in Anchorage, and the division says preparing large, complex datasets can take up to a year.