Alaska Mental Health Trust lease sale brings in $178,000

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News editor-in-chief

The Alaska Mental Health Trust sold seven leases at its Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale in Anchorage Sept. 25. Two companies, Aurora Gas and Marathon Oil, picked up some 24,000 acres, paying a total of $178,190.46

Aurora Gas took one lease on the west side of the inlet northwest of Tyonek at $12.80 an acre, paying $40,077.06 for the tract of some 3,100 acres.

All of the tracts which Marathon took were on the Kenai Peninsula side, east and northeast of Soldotna. The company’s bids ranged from $5 an acre to $10.47 an acre, averaging $6.64 an acre. Marathon bid $138,113.40 for some 20,808 acres.

This is the third Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale the trust has held, said Mike Franger, Trust Land Office senior resource manager. With the new tracts on the Kenai Peninsula offered in this sale, all Cook Inlet acreage leasable for oil and gas is now available, he said. Franger said the office has already done title work for the tracts and leases should be issued within about 30 days. Duration of the leases is five years.

Including results from this sale, he said, the trust has leased some 100,000 acres over the last three years, out of less than 250,000 leasable acres in the Cook Inlet area.