Wyoming can take some comfort that this energy boom probably will not disintegrate into a bust like the 1980s, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said Wednesday.

"I do think this is different," Michael Orlando said before speaking about technological innovation with local business and civic leaders at the Petroleum Club.

Another speaker, Craig Hakkio, was scheduled to discuss national economic policy.

Both were making their biennial visits to Wyoming on behalf of the Denver Branch of the Kansas City Fed, which encompasses Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado and northern New Mexico. The Kansas City Fed is one of 12 regional banks of the self-supporting Federal Reserve System.

The Federal Reserve conducts the nation's monetary policy, supervises and regulates banking organizations, and provides financial services to financial institutions and the government.

As part of his education job, Orlando detailed some of the results of decade-long research about those who are innovators.

While economic activity tends to concentrate in more densely populated areas, a sparsely populated state like Wyoming has some advantages, he said.

Because the energy industry is mature in Wyoming, it attracts highly skilled people who make innovations in oil, gas, coal and other sectors, Orlando said.

Universities also are magnets for innovators because of the concentration of highly educated people, he said.

Orlando has not done a detailed study of patents, but he's found a higher concentration of energy-related patents in Wyoming compared to the nation as a whole, he said.

"The message anywhere is 'play to your strength,'" Orlando said.

The current energy boom has enabled the state to sock away hundreds of millions of dollars in savings and appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars for capital construction in schools.

It also has raised the specter of a coming down that offsets the going up.

Orlando has advanced degrees in business and economics. But his first career, with an education to match, was in petroleum and natural gas engineering, he said.

From that perspective, Orlando sees a different global energy economy than in the past.

Most of the past energy booms were supply-driven, Orlando said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could send jitters through world markets by turning a few spigots to increase supply and lower prices, or restrict supply and send prices up.

OPEC doesn't have that clout now and cannot keep up with the demand of the rapidly industrializing nations of China and India, he said.

"When you look at global energy, the markets are demand-driven," Orlando said.

While $3-a-gallon gas hurts consumers at the pump, it carries a confidence that the market will be stable and not be controlled by one group such as OPEC, he said.

The consistently higher prices make investing in alternative energy more attractive, he added.

The demand-driven oil markets also may bring some stability to the geopolitical uncertainties of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Orlando said.

"The main result of high prices will be to go into investments either in safer parts of the world or alternate fuels that can be invested in safer parts of the world," he said. "The end result will be to mitigate the impact of geopolitical uncertainty."

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.