The 1967 discovery of large oil reserves on state-owned land in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska resulted in a windfall to the State. The State, which had a total budget of $124 million in 1969, before the oil revenues began to flow into the state coffers, received $3.7 billion in petroleum revenues during the 1981 fiscal year. [Footnote 1] This income will continue, and...

The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 and the 1973 Oil Crisis in response to the Yom Kippur War played a large role in Egan's second governorship, as demand for oil increasingly played a role in the state's politics. In the later months of 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, an act to reduce American dependence on OAPEC oil. Many environmental politicians in the state bitterly opposed this federal legislation during the second Egan governorship.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/55/case.html