The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas received no bids at the Alaska Peninsula areawide sale held today and 12 bids on 12 tracts in the North Slope Foothills areawide sale, for a total of $359,424.

The two bidders in the Foothills sale were Union Energy (Alaska) LLC, which was apparent high bidder on some tracts in last year’s North Slope areawide lease sale, and Harold Green, apparently a new bidder, as his name does not appear on the division’s list of qualified individual bidders, indicating he may have turned in that paperwork with his bids.

Green bid $5.20 an acre — the minimum bid was $5 an acre — for three tracts west of the Dalton Highway near an existing Unocal tract. Green bid a total of $89,856, a quarter of the total.

The Union Energy (Alaska) bids, also $5.20 an acre, were on a block of tracts in the western area of the sale south of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Union Energy bid a total of $269,568, three-quarters of the total.

Kathy Means, the division’s manger of lease sales and lease administration, said after the sale that the division didn’t expect a lot of bids because nothing new has really happened in those areas.

The state holds annual sales as part of its areawide program so that industry has access to acreage on a regular basis, she said.

The first areawide foothills sale, in 2001, brought in $9.8 million in high bids, followed by $2.9 million at the second sale in 2002. Sales since then topped out at almost $320,000 in 2005.

EDITOR’S NOTE: See full story in March 2 issue of Petroleum News, available online to subscribers Friday, Feb. 29 at noon, at www.PetroleumNews.com.