Sale notice out for Peninsula, Cook Inlet

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, published a notice of sale Feb. 22 for its Alaska Peninsula and Cook Inlet areawide oil and gas lease sales.

The division said bid opening for the sales will begin at 9 a.m. on May 26 at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage.

There are some 5.8 million acres in the Alaska Peninsula areawide sale divided into 1,047 tracts including onshore and offshore acreage from the Nushagak Peninsula down the north side of the Alaska Peninsula to just north of Cold Bay.

The division said tracts 1027, 1028, 1031, 1032, 1036, 1037, 1042 and 1043 in townships 53 and 54 south, range 85 west, Seward Meridian, are deferred from the sale.

The Cook Inlet areawide sale encompasses some 4 million acres divided into 815 tracts in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys, the Anchorage bowl, the western and southern Kenai Peninsula from Point Possession to Anchor Point, on the western shore of Cook Inlet from the Beluga River to Harriet Point and within Cook Inlet. Tracts 272 and 597, in township 9 north, range 9 west, and township 14 north, range 8 west, Seward Meridian, are deferred from this sale.

The best interest finding for Cook Inlet was supplemented with the addition of the northern sea otter (southwest Alaska distinct population segment) to the threatened listing under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The Alaska Peninsula best interest finding was supplemented with the information that “critical habitat has been designated for northern sea otter within the lease sale area, including Port Moller, Herendeen Bay and Moffet Lagoon,” and by deferring the eight listed tracts from the sale because the area is involved in a land exchange with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

—Petroleum News