Legacy Fund beset by lower oil prices, group urges strategic investment plan

FARGO — North Dakota's Legacy Fund now stands at almost $4 billion and legislators will for the first time tap earnings from the fund to help balance the budget.

Lawmakers voted to spend up to $200 million from the fund's earnings to help balance the 2017-19 budget, in a session in which legislators grappled with a severe retraction in state revenues from sagging oil and farm prices.

The oil-financed Legacy Fund, in fact, is unlikely to reach the soaring levels that appeared possible just three years ago in 2014 during the go-go years of the booming Bakken Formation. Revenues were flowing into the fund at a rate of more than $90 million a month in 2014; by 2016, the rate had plunged to about $30 million per month.

"The Legacy Fund has only half the potential we thought it would have a couple of years ago," said Brad Crabtree of the Great Plains Institute, which advocates drafting a strategy to invest Legacy Fund earnings. He added, "There's nothing certain about projections," noting that oil prices are, by their nature, volatile.

Read more: http://www.inforum.com/news/legislature/4277746-legacy-fund-beset-lower-oil-prices-group-urges-strategic-investment-plan