There was a time, back in 1988, when Alaska produced more crude oil than any other state.

That’s not the case anymore. Production there has dropped by around 75%.

But a report out this week from the Energy Information Administration is forecasting growth in Alaskan oil output next year, predicting it’ll be the biggest production increase in decades.

Oil production in Alaska first took off in the 1970s, after a series of global energy price shocks. 

Jeff Kralowetz with market intelligence firm Argus Media said that growth was helped along by the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, “which was able to take all of this crude from the northern part of Alaska to the port of Valdez in the southern part of the state and sell it.” 

Now though, a lot of those northern oil fields are, what they call in the business, “mature,” said Charles Mason, an economist at the University of Wyoming. 

“So you get a certain amount of production early on, and then it tends to taper off. And the only way you arrest that is by having more wells drilled,” said Mason. 

Mason said that’s been happening less lately in Alaska, in part because of conservation measures. But also because the arctic tundra isn’t an easy place to do business, said Ellen R. Wald of the Atlantic Council. 

“If you’re going to need to build pipelines, you can only transport those pipelines to where you need them to be during the winter because you have to use ice roads,” said Wald. 

Cheaper fracking has helped some other states surpass Alaska’s output. But two new oil developments in Alaska are expected to boost production. Not to anywhere near peak levels, said Wald.

“But I do think this is meaningful, because they’ve put in all the investment and infrastructure,” she said. 

This could make future expansion easier. 

Jeff Kralowetz of Argus Media said the changes could also be felt elsewhere in the domestic oil economy.

“A lot of the new refineries or the refinery modifications in California were designed to run Alaskan crude,” said Kralowetz. 

Because as California’s own production of crude has fallen, refineries there are now more reliant on oil from the Arctic.