Cook Inlet bids covered 103,680 acres; a single North Slope Foothills bid was for a 5,760-acre tract.

There were 28 bids on 27 Cook Inlet tracts, along with the single bid in the North Slope Foothills areawide sale, $6.35 an acre from EnCana Oil & Gas USA, for $36,576, a total of $923,618.60 for both sales.

Prodigy Alaska took seven tracts in Cook Inlet for $415,369, including $21.75 an acre for tract 352, $30.75 an acre for tract 345 and $33.28 an acre for tract 420, the highest per-acre bids in the sale. The leases are on both flanks of existing acreage positions running south-southwest down the middle of Cook Inlet starting at the North Cook Inlet unit.

Also taking seven leases, for a total of $134,400, was a bidding group of Douglas Barr, Dan Donkel, George Casper and Robert Bolt (25 percent each). All bids by this group were $5 an acre for mostly single tracts on both sides of Cook Inlet.

Pelican Hill took three tracts for $65,740.80, all at $8.56 an acre, on the west side adjacent to acreage the company already holds near the Beluga River gas field and unit.

Unocal took two tracts for $60,652.80, paying $5.21 and $5.32 an acre, on the southern Kenai Peninsula.

A 50-50 partnership of Dan Donkel and Kenneth Mehaffey took two Kenai Peninsula tracts for $57,600, paying $5 an acre.

Forest Oil took three tracts for $56,396.80, paying $7.01 an acre for two tracts and $8.01 an acre for the third, one at West Foreland, the other two near the South Granite Point and North Middle Ground Shoal fields.

Marathon Oil took one tract for $6.03 an acre, a total of $34,732.80. This acreage is west of the Marathon-operated Ninilchik unit on the Kenai Peninsula.

A bidding partnership of Monte Allen (62.5 percent), Laurel Bassett (26 percent) and Mary Goldstein (12.5 percent) took one tract on the southern west side for $5.52 an acre for a total of $31,795.20.

Monte Allen took a tract south of Kalgin Island for $5.27 an acre, a total of $30,355.20.