Appropriations committee adopts updated revenue forecast; members flag oil-tax shortfall and agency "turnbacks"

At a meeting of the Appropriations Committee, members voted to adopt a revised revenue forecast and committee resolution after staff described new assumptions that lower future oil prices and shift allocations across statutory revenue "buckets." The motion passed on a roll-call vote, 16-0.

The revised forecast, presented by Allen of the Office of Management and Budget, assumes near-term oil prices that hold around $62 per barrel for the remainder of the current biennium and decline to an average of about $59–$57 per barrel in the 2025–27 biennium, with production assumptions falling slightly from about 1,150,000 barrels per day to about 1,100,000 barrels per day. Allen said, “the resource trust fund will end up having about a hundred million less under the new forecast compared to the January forecast.”

Those price and production assumptions produce estimated total collections of roughly $5.7 billion for the 2023–25 period, with a state share of about $1.8 billion, according to the presentation. The forecast also shows the bottom bucket for SIF at about $361 million, a $5 million increase from the January forecast. The presentation compared…