U.S. Department of the Interior
Minerals Management Service
Office of Communications

NEWS RELEASE

MMS ANNOUNCES OIL AND GAS SALE IN THE BEAUFORT SEA

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) has announced that they will hold an offshore oil and gas lease sale in Anchorage, Alaska on August 5, 1998. The Beaufort Sea Sale 170 will offer approximately 241 whole and partial blocks for lease, encompassing about one million acres. The Final Notice of Sale appeared in yesterday's Federal Register.

Located off Alaska's central Arctic coast, Sale 170 concentrates on areas of existing oil and gas activity and leases and is adjacent to areas recently offered by the State of Alaska. Sale 170 will not include blocks off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Conditions of the sale include mitigating measures designed to protect Nuiqsut's bowhead whale subsistence harvest in the Beaufort Sea, and to control the permanent installation of facilities for leases within 10 miles of Cross Island.

Copies of the Final Notice of Sale and other documents related to Sale 170 may be obtained by writing or calling the MMS Alaska OCS Region, Suite 308, 949 E 36th Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska, 99508-4302; (907) 271-6691 or 1-800-764-2627; or by sending an e-mail to akwebmaster@mms.gov. Sale information may be obtained from the MMS Alaska Region Website at http://www.mms.gov/alaska.

MMS is the Federal agency that manages and regulates the nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf, and collects, accounts for, and last year disbursed about $6 billion in revenues from offshore Federal mineral leases and onshore mineral leases on Federal and Indian lands.

-MMS-

MMS Internet website address: http://www.mms.gov
24 hour Fax-on-Demand Service:(202) 219-1703