Bidders pay $105 million for oil and gas leases in the NPR-A

Six companies take 133 tracts, 867,450 acres of 3.9 million offered in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska

Kristen Nelson

PNA News Editor

Bids for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska sale 991 were opened in Anchorage May 5.

Bidders agreed with the government on the relative value of the tracts offered, bidding on 72 percent of the acres in the high-potential area but on only 7 percent in the low-potential area.

Six bidders in seven bidding groups had a total of $104,634,728 in apparent high bids, with $96,648,651 (92.4 percent) in the high-potential area and $7,997,077 (7.6 percent) in the low-potential area. The total bid amount was $124,951,166, with 174 bids received for 133 tracts. BLM received bids on 867,450 acres, 76 percent of which, 657,783 acres, were in the high-potential area and 24 percent of which, 209,667 acres, in the low-potential area.

In the high-potential area, 35 tracts received high bids of at least $1 million. Ken Boyd, director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas, said after the sale that it appeared to him that the tracts drawing the most interest fell along a trend that runs northwest from the Alpine field across the Colville River from the NPR-A and includes three bands of Jurassic-age sands.

Tracts receiving bids of $1 million or more — a number of which received multiple bids — extend down the middle of the high-potential area from its northern boundary almost to the Colville River. The largest group of tracts receiving high and multiple bids lie west of the Colville River delta and south of Harrison Bay.

High potential areas priced higher