[Al B.]

If you had bothered to read Coyne's well-sourced and linked article, you would have seen that the ND royalty rate she quoted was 20%. At $100 oil, that's $20. Add that to ND's oil tax (11.5%) and and corporate taxes, you would come up with 33% for ND oil compared to 39% for Alaska.

Your link says ND royalties are 18.75%. Ms. Coyne's numbers (20%) don't seem far off. She got them from the ND Tax Dept. and said they were the average for the state.

[thackney]

Look at Alaska’s numbers from the department of Revenue.

http://www.tax.alaska.gov//programs/documentviewer/viewer.aspx?2524f

2011 data

$8,090,100,000 revenue from oil
191,260,000 barrels of oil
Alaska North Slope Average Price $87.32
Dollar Value in Alaska of all oil produced = $16,700,823,200

Percentage paid to the State = 48.4%