The Alaska Department of Natural Resources' Division of Oil and Gas will offer for lease all available state acreage in the Cook Inlet Areawide oil and gas lease sale area in two lease sales, which are tentatively scheduled for December 2022 and spring 2023.
An Aug. 24 Call for New Information was posted by the division this afternoon requesting "substantial new information concerning Cook Inlet that has become available over the past year."
The Cook Inlet Areawide lease sale area encompasses about 1.5 million acres onshore and 1.8 million acres offshore divided into 833 tracts currently ranging in size from 640 to 5,760 acres. These tracts are located within the Matanuska-Susitna, Anchorage, and Kenai Boroughs, and consist of state-owned uplands in the Matanuska and Susitna river valleys generally south and west of Houston and Wasilla, the Anchorage bowl, and the western shore of Cook Inlet from Beluga River to Harriet Point.
The lease sale area also includes the tide and submerged lands in upper Cook Inlet from Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm south to Anchor Point and Tuxedni Bay. The area is bounded on the east by the Chugach and Kenai mountains and on the west by the Aleutian Range.
With the inclusion of the SW Cook Inlet area, the Cook Inlet Areawide boundary was expanded by an additional 169,000 acres on and around the Iniskin Peninsula located about 120 miles south of Tyonek.
The land estate on these tracts may be owned by the state, a municipality, or a private entity. Only those tracts in which the mineral estate is free and unencumbered are included in any issued lease.
- KAY CASHMAN
Editor's note: see story in Sept. 4 issue of Petroleum News, available Thursday, Sept. 1, at www.PetroleumNews.com
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