[ROCKMAN]

"time value of money comes into the equation". Exactly. First, predict the future price of oil is tricky at best. But they could predict the future flow rate thru the pipeline. And remember how rate of return is calculated: with the NET PRESENT VALUE of the revenue stream. Typically reduced by a 10% "discount factor".

IOW revenue generated 10+ years after the revenue stream begins adds very little to the NPV. Thus does very little to increase ROR.

[Hawkcreek]

I was doing some more thinking about the flow rates on the Alaska pipeline.
Low flow won't be the thing that kills oil production on the slope - money will be the final knife wound. Even if production went to 100K per day, plans have been made to allow building of new storage tanks at Pump Station 1, and batch transport the oil down the pipeline once a week.
BUT, Until you have been to the slope, you wouldn't believe that it takes literally thousands of people working 12 hour shifts to produce, gather, process, and ship the oil to the pipeline. This includes around 1600 at the Kuparuk and Alpine fields and approx 1800 in Prudhoe Bay.
It will take almost as many people to produce 200,000 barrels as it does 400,000 barrels, all of whom work 12 hour shifts and receive time and a half for about 44 hours each week.
You can't stop plowing the roads when it is 30 below zero, or lay off more than a small percentage of the people who work on, or support the work, happening on the slope. It still takes 2 or 3 fully loaded 737's landing at Prudhoe Bay every day just to deliver the workers to their shifts. The oil companies pay for those flights and for feeding and housing all those employees.
I read somewhere that BP lost around 190 million on their operation at Prudhoe in 2016.
Big oil can lose money for a long time before they decide to call it quits, but if the price stays down too long, or more barrels don't become available ----I believe production will go from poor to ZERO in one day ---- some time in the future.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', ' ')you wouldn't believe that it takes literally thousands of people working 12 hour shifts to produce, gather, process, and ship the oil to the pipeline. This includes around 1600 at the Kuparuk and Alpine fields and approx 1800 in Prudhoe Bay.
It will take almost as many people to produce 200,000 barrels as it does 400,000 barrels, all of whom work 12 hour shifts and receive time and a half for about 44 hours each week.
You can't stop plowing the roads when it is 30 below zero, or lay off more than a small percentage of the people who work on, or support the work, happening on the slope. It still takes 2 or 3 fully loaded 737's landing at Prudhoe Bay every day just to deliver the workers to their shifts. The oil companies pay for those flights and for feeding and housing all those employees.