Alaska
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News Release |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE News Release No. 08-26
Sharon Wilson, 907-271-4418 Sept 24, 2008
Ruth McCoard, 907-271-3322
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A)
oil & gas lease sale generates $30,961,806 in revenue
Five companies submitted winning bids for the right to develop oil and gas lease tracts in the federal petroleum reserve managed by the Bureau of Land Management on Alaska’s North Slope at a lease sale in Anchorage today. The winning bids, totaling $30,961,806, cover 150 tracts on approximately 1,656,574 acres of the 23 million-acre reserve. There are already 335 leases totaling 3,086,492 acres in the NPR-A. A map and table with complete sale results by tract are posted at www.blm.gov/ak.
Winning bids were received from Anadarko Petroleum Corp; ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc.; Petro-Canada Alaska, Inc.; FEX L.P.; and Petro-Hunt, LLC. The single highest bid of $642,926, or $40.40 per acre, was offered by Petro-Hunt LLC for tract D-008, which covers lands from the Northwest and Northeast planning areas on both sides of the Ikpikpuk River.
“The companies who submitted bids today have demonstrated their interest in developing new sources of oil and gas that will reduce our nation’s dependency on imported oil,” said BLM-Alaska State Director Tom Lonnie. “Development of these energy resources in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will help meet America’s energy needs through domestic production.”
The State of Alaska will receive 50 percent of the bid receipts, or $15,480,903, generated by the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale.
The lease sale offered 450 tracts totaling 4.8 million acres within the Northwest and Northeast planning areas of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated in 2002 that the entire petroleum reserve could contain as much as 9.3 billion barrels of mean technically recoverable oil and 59.7 trillion cubic feet of mean technically recoverable natural gas.
The BLM manages more land – 258 million surface acres – than any other Federal agency. Most of this public land is located in 12 Western States, including Alaska. The Bureau, with a budget of about $1 billion, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM’s multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, and cultural resources on the public lands.
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