The five-acre tract

There is an anomaly in the Cook Inlet areawide sale — a single tract for which the minimum bid is $1,000 per acre. Tract 597 is shown on state information for the sale as a 5-acre parcel.

The tract is on the west side and is actually part of the Ivan River unit, Division of Oil and Gas Director Kevin Banks told Petroleum News April 6.

Banks said the acreage had been owned as part of a larger lease but became untethered from that larger lease, something which was missed by both the state and Chevron, which is the owner of the Ivan River unit.

The 5 acres account for 0.2 percent, two-tenths of one percent, of Ivan River production.

Ivan River is owned 100 percent by Chevron; the 2,291-acre gas field first produced in 1990.

The field was shut-in in January and February while a new well was drilled, Chevron spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz told Petroleum News in an April 7 e-mail.

“The existing production is back on production and we are in the process of completing the new well,” Sinz said.

Tract originally federal

After the mineral rights were conveyed to the state the parcel was approved for inclusion in the Ivan River participating area — the producing part of the unit — and was leased in 1993. But in that sale the tract was a fragment sold with a larger core tract to the south, a tract to which it was not physically attached.

On lease maps the 5-acre tract was indicated by a line drawn to the large tract to the south.

There were other federal surveys on the lease description, but they were part of the larger block to the south.

The division said that ARCO and Phillips, which were the successful bidders on the tract, were never notified by the state that the lease included a piece of the Ivan River unit, and that they needed to join the unit.

The lease was relinquished in 1999.

A recent review of the Ivan River unit identified the unleased 5 acres within the unit and the acreage is being offered as part of the upcoming Cook Inlet competitive areawide lease sale.

—Kristen Nelson