The Minerals Management Division of the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands is accepting nominations for the next oil and gas lease auction. Tract nominations for the August lease auction must be delivered to the Minerals Management Division’s office in Bismarck no later than 5 p.m. Central Daylight Time June 19. The auction will be held at AmericInn Conference Center in Medora beginning at 9 a.m. CDT Aug. 4
In addition to the conventional live auction, the Minerals Management Division is also offering certain leases in an online auction through its Internet auction provider EnergyNet. Between 25 and 30 tracts will be offered in the online auction and will be selected from nominations already received. Any tracts nominated after June 1 will be offered in the live auction.
The start date and time for the online auction have not yet been determined, but bidding in that auction is scheduled to close on July 28, one week prior to the live auction.
As Petroleum News Bakken reported May 17, Trust Lands is considering transitioning completely to online auctions. In June 2012, Trust Lands entered into a five-year contract with EnergyNet and until now has used that service to lease tracts between the state’s legislatively mandated quarterly lease auctions. The August auction is the first pilot test to evaluate the viability of moving solely to online auctions.
Land Commissioner Lance Gaebe told Petroleum News Bakken that attendance has been dwindling at recent live auctions to the extent that some tracts have brought only the minimum $1 bid because there were no second bidders. Trust Lands has been publically discussing the idea of moving exclusively to online auctions for the last two years but only recently made the decision to go ahead and pilot test the approach.
―Mike Ellerd
Guess & Rudd P.C. is pleased to announce that Josh Van Gorkom has become a shareholder of the firm. Since joining Guess & Rudd in 2010, Van Gorkom has represented insurance companies, insurance brokers, banks, Native corporations, oil and gas companies, mining companies, municipal governments, small businesses and individuals in a broad range of litigation and administrative matters, including appeals to the Alaska Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition, he works with the firm’s natural resources group on a variety of transactional matters. Van Gorkom is a graduate of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and of Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.
