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MMS focus on dependable schedule
The Minerals Management Service is looking forward to more lease sales — and more production — from Alaska’s outer continental shelf waters, John Goll, MMS Alaska regional director, told the Resource Development Council Oct. 6.
The agency has focused on dependable sales. “In the ‘90s companies really could not rely on us: Sales were delayed, cancelled or really changed,” Goll said. MMS made a commitment to get back on track with its lease sales in 2002.
At that time, the Beaufort Sea and Cook Inlet were the Alaska OCS areas of most interest, but MMS also wanted to keep the Chukchi Sea, Hope basin and Norton Sound on the sale schedule — but only hold sales if there was interest.
2003 and 2005 sales in the Beaufort “were the best sales we had had since the late ‘80s,” Goll said. The agency patterned the sales after the State of Alaska and introduced royalty relief, various rental rates and other economic incentives. A March 2007 Beaufort Sea sale is also on the current five-year schedule.
The agency had no takers for its 2004 Cook Inlet sale. Last winter, Goll said, the agency asked if there was interest in the proposed May 2006 Cook Inlet sale, “and the answer at that time was no.”
Instead of canceling the sale, MMS has delayed it a year, he said, and if there is interest MMS would plan for a sale in May 2007. Special interest sales There have been no takers so far for special interest sales in the Norton Sound area, although local communities would be interested in having natural gas.
When MMS began a program to improve lease sale participation in 2002 it began to visit company headquarters in the Lower 48 and also to attend out-of-state meetings and conferences.
MMS also released a re-evaluation of the Burger prospect in the Chukchi Sea, based on a well drilled in 1990 and on seismic data, estimating the most likely mean for the prospect at 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
“So in response to this year’s solicitation of interest for the Chukchi, Norton and Hope, we did get interest for a sale in the Chukchi Sea,” and have announced an environmental impact statement for that sale, which could be held either at the end of the current schedule or at the beginning of the next five-year schedule.
—Petroleum News
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