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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
November 2008

Vol. 13, No. 45 Week of November 09, 2008

BLM changes right of way fees for Alaska

A new regulation published at the end of October brings Alaska in line with the rest of the nation for establishing values for rights of way on federal lands.

For more than 20 years, the Bureau of Land Management has used appraisals from the National Agricultural Statistics Service census to set land values across the Lower 48.

Because the NASS census did not cover Alaska when BLM set federal right-of-way fees in 1987, BLM was forced to set land values using case-by-case appraisals based on local land values, a more expensive process requiring more paperwork.

With the addition of Alaska into the NASS census in the years since, BLM can now use a uniform system for establishing land values for rights of way on federal lands.

The NASS census divides the country into zones, which BLM uses as one variable in a larger calculation to set linear right-of-way fees.

Linear rights of way include power lines and fiber-optic lines, pipelines, roads and ditches. As such, the new values will guide any major natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

NASS conducts its census every five years. The most recent data comes from the 2002 census, and figures from the 2007 census should be released on Feb. 4, 2009.

Although the 2002 NASS census included Alaska, BLM did not begin changing its rules until required to do so by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The NASS census breaks Alaska into five regions: Fairbanks, Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands and Juneau. As part of the public hearing process for setting the new regulation, BLM defined the boundaries of those five regions.

—Eric Lidji






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