The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will hold its lease sale for the Northwest National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Planning Area on Sept. 27, the agency told Petroleum News today.
On Sept. 25 the U.S. District Court in Alaska issued a final decision banning the planned BLM lease sale in the Northeast Planning area of NPR-A. A coalition of environmental groups had sued to stop the northeast NPR-A sale, because the sale included an environmentally sensitive area north of Teshekpuk Lake.
But, although BLM has now cancelled the northeast NPR-A sale, the agency is still offering 478 tracts covering 5 million acres in northwest NPR-A, Danielle Allen, a BLM public affairs specialist, said.
“We received bids on 81 tracts which total 940,000 acres in the Northwest Planning Area,” Allen said.
