Info call out for state’s spring sales

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas is requesting new information on its proposal to offer available state acreage in areawide lease sales for the Alaska Peninsula and Cook Inlet.

The division is looking for information that is new since the last areawide best interest findings were done. The Alaska Peninsula areawide final BIF was issued July 25, 2005, and the Cook Inlet areawide best interest finding was issued Jan. 20, 2009. Each BIF is for 10 years. The final findings are available on the division’s Web site at www.dog.dnr.state.ak.us.

Based on the information it receives, the division will determine whether there is substantial new information that justifies a supplement to the finding and will issue either a supplement to the finding or a decision of no substantial new information not later than 90 days before the sale.

The tentative sale date is May 19; the comment period ends Dec. 31.

The Alaska Peninsula areawide lease sale area is on the north side of the Alaska Peninsula and includes some 5.8 million acres, both onshore and offshore acreage from the Nushagak Peninsula to just north of Cold Bay. The Cook Inlet areawide lease sale includes some 4.2 million acres of state-owned uplands in the Matanuska and Susitna river valleys generally south and west of Houston and Wasilla; the Anchorage Bowl; the western and southern Kenai Peninsula from Point Possession to Anchor Point; the western shore of Cook Inlet from the Beluga River to Harriet Point; and state-owned tide and submerged lands in upper Cook Inlet from Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm south to Anchor Point and Tuxedni Bay.

—Petroleum News