North Dakota is expected to pass California and Alaska to become the second-highest oil-producing state, behind Texas.

FORBES: Forget Florida My Dear, This Year We Shall Winter in The Bakkens

Since 2008 North Dakota has surpassed Oklahoma, California and Alaska to become the second-biggest oil-producing state in the nation (after Texas), with production upwards of 700, 000 barrels per day.

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

Having managed her state's department responsible for oil and gas exploration and exploitation, having negotiated a long-delayed natural gas pipeline through Canada to the Lower 48 and having been married for nearly two decades to a blue-collar worker in Alaska's North Slope oil fields, she knows more about the subject than all three of the others on the two parties' tickets put together.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Sarah Palin's experience

Oil companies are currently reinjecting 8 billion cubic feet a day--13% of U.S. demand--to boost the production of oil in the North Slope of Alaska.

FORBES: The Gas Trap

Shell first obtained licences from the US Department of the Interior in 2005 to explore the Arctic ocean off the northern and north-western coasts of Alaska.

BBC: Shell suspends Arctic drilling for 2013

Separately, in August, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, signed a bill allowing TransCanada Alaska to build a 1, 715-mile natural gas pipeline from the North Slope's Prudhoe Bay to Alberta, Canada.

CNN: Study: Tap natural gas from Alaska's frozen areas

Hence decades worth of hand-wringing over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the (current) closing of large areas of the North Slope to oil drilling.

FORBES: The Environmental Protection Agency Comes-a-Copper