DNR awards 21 Beaufort Sea leases

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources awarded 21 leases from the October 2010 Beaufort Sea areawide lease sale in April, according to recent land records.

Daniel K. Donkel picked up 13 leases in two blocks on the eastern North Slope, one near the Badami unit and another near the Point Thomson unit, while the Colorado independent GMT Exploration Co. LLC picked up eight leases north of the Colville River unit.

Also in April, ConocoPhillips transferred its 95 percent working interest and 76 percent royalty interest in one onshore North Slope lease to Pioneer Natural Resources.

The lease — ADL 390506 — is contiguous to a patch of un-unitized onshore leases that Pioneer owns near its offshore Oooguruk unit. The lease expired on April 30, 2011, but is in a region that Pioneer aims to use for developing its Nuna prospect.

Chevron owns the remaining working interest in the lease.

Finally, the DNR in April also formally codified the approval of a Hemlock participating area on three Cook Inlet Energy leases at the Redoubt unit, in the Cook Inlet basin.

NOTE: A copyrighted oil and gas lease map from Mapmakers Alaska (www.mapmakersalaska.com/) was a research tool used in preparing this story.

—Eric Lidji