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Agency sets Alaska lease sale Anchorage-based Mental Health Trust Land Office hires new director; to offer 200,000 acres in northern Cook Inlet basin at November sale Petroleum News
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources said Sept. 28 that Dave Hanson has been hired as the executive director of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office, effective Sept. 20.
Hanson is responsible for managing some 1 million acres of land and natural resources on behalf of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. Resources managed by the Trust Land Office include coal, gas, materials, minerals, oil, real estate and timber. The department said Hanson has nearly 30 years of Alaska land and natural resource management experience, most recently as president and owner of Arktos Associates, a consulting company specializing in resource-related facilitation, mediation and issues management. He has worked with the private sector, Native corporations, and state, federal and local governments. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree from Pacific Lutheran University.
The Trust Land office, a separate unit within the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, is contracted to manage trust land. Revenue generated from management of the land is used by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. Sale proposed for November The Mental Health Trust Land Office proposes to offer some 200,000 acres in the northern Cook Inlet basin for competitive leasing.
Legal descriptions of the tracts being offered, and a map of the sale area, are available online at: http://www.mhtrustland.org/.
The Trust Land Office said the sale is expected to occur Nov. 9, and includes lease tracts that have been offered but not leased in previous lease sales.
At its most recent sale, held in September 2003, the agency leased some 24,000 acres and received $178,000 in bonus bids.
Since the Trust Land Office began offering oil and gas leases in the fall of 2001 it has leased nearly 100,000 acres.
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