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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
September 2009

Vol. 14, No. 37 Week of September 13, 2009

Oct. 28 date for fall O&G lease sales

The Alaska Division of Oil and gas has set Oct. 28 as the date and the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center as the location for its 2009 North Slope and North Slope Foothills areawide oil and gas lease sales.

Bid openings for the sales will begin at 9 a.m., the division said in a Sept. 8 notice of sale. Complete sale information is available on the division’s Web site at www.dog.dnr.state.ak.us.

The 2009 Beaufort Sea areawide sale expected to be held with the other two sales has been postponed.

Division of Oil and Gas Director Kevin Banks told Petroleum News that a technical glitch caused the sale postponement.

The division is in the process of doing a new best interest finding for the Beaufort Sea sale area, required for areawide sales every 10 years, said Bruce Buzby, the division’s leasing unit manager.

After comments were received on the preliminary best interest finding the division realized that while the request for comments was posted on the Department of Natural Resources Web page, mailed out and published, the requirement to run the request in a paper with statewide circulation had been missed.

The division has a lot of options for requesting comments, Buzby said, but is required to publish a notice in a paper with statewide distribution.

After the omission was discovered, the division ran a second request for public comments.

That request for comments closed Aug. 22 and Buzby said the division anticipates completing work on the second round of comments by the end of September.

But because of timing requirements — a final best interest finding must be published a minimum of 90 days prior to the sale — the Beaufort Sea sale couldn’t be held at the same time as the North Slope and North Slope Foothills sales.

A Beaufort Sea sale could be scheduled early in the winter, rolled in with the May sales (Cook Inlet and Alaska Peninsula) or deferred until next fall.

—Kristen Nelson






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