The Alaska Department of Natural Resources has deferred the North Slope and Beaufort Sea areawide oil and gas lease sales, originally scheduled for October, a second time.
Patrick Galvin, division petroleum land manager, told Petroleum News in response to an e-mail question that Commissioner Mike Menge requested time to familiarize himself with the oil and gas leasing program “and review the proposed terms to be offered in the next North Slope and Beaufort Sea areawide sales.”
Once the commissioner has completed his review and notified the division, a 90-day notice is required of the sale date, Galvin said, so the earliest the sales could be held is in March.
First delay announced in July
In July the department deferred the sales to February, saying it wanted to focus industry attention on the Alaska Peninsula areawide sale, being held for the first time, and to spread the work of both participants and staff more evenly. “The Department of Natural Resources has worked hard to evaluate and organize AP 2005, and this sale deserves our full attention this October,” the department said July 25.
But notices posted on the Division of Oil and Gas Web page the last week in November for each of the sales said: “This sale has been delayed. The new sale data is to be determined.”
DNR spokesman Dan Saddler told Petroleum News that the commissioner is trying to get as much familiarity with the North Slope and the Beaufort Sea leasing program as possible to see if there might be any synergies between the sales and the gas pipeline negotiations and also ANWR that would help the entire industry. Saddler said Menge envisions this process taking several more weeks, not months.
Congress is evaluating whether to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration.
Boyd on areawide permitting
Ken Boyd, formerly director of the Division of Oil and Gas, reviewed the areawide lease sales program at a Nov. 21 meeting of the Alaska Legislature’s House Special Committee on Oil And gas.
Ten years ago, he told the committee, access to land was an issue because the leasing program was based on nominations and companies could only acquire prospects in bits and pieces — with no surety of when adjacent pieces would be offered.
Areawide leasing was passed by the Legislature 60 to nothing, Boyd said, and the bill worked.
There are five areawide lease sales: North Slope, Beaufort Sea, Foothills, Cook Inlet and the Alaska Peninsula.
In its current five-year leasing brochure the division said areawide leasing was implemented by the state to assure “stability and predictability in the leasing program, and in response to industry’s request for more frequent sales.”
The first areawide sale, on the North Slope, was held in June 1998. To facilitate areawide leasing the Legislature in 1996 established a 10-year life for best interest findings for the areawide sales. A call for comments is issued some nine months before a sale, requesting any substantial new information, and the Department of Natural Resources then determines whether or not a finding should be supplemented. Ninety days before a sale, the department issues either a supplement or a decision that there is no new information requiring a supplement.
