BOEMRE cancels Cook Inlet lease sale

Citing a lack of industry interest, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has cancelled oil and gas lease sale 219, the Cook Inlet lease sale scheduled for 2011.

“Cancellation of sale 219 due to lack of interest is necessary to allow sufficient time to gather new baseline data for environmental review, analysis and identification of mitigating measures,” BOEMRE wrote in a Federal Register notice published March 2. “The time will also be used to further develop and implement measures to improve the safety of oil and gas development in federal waters.”

Federal Cook Inlet lease sales apply to the federal outer continental shelf of the Shelikof Strait, between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula, and to the lower Cook Inlet, the section of the inlet to the south of Kalgin Island. The northern part of Cook Inlet, referred to as upper Cook Inlet and the site of all operating Cook Inlet oil and gas fields, is owned by the State of Alaska. The state holds annual areawide lease sales for the upper part of the inlet, and these lease sales are completely independent from any federal lease sales to the south.

Although the geology of the lower Cook Inlet is broadly similar to that of the upper Cook Inlet, the thick sequence of Tertiary strata that hosts all of the Cook Inlet oil and gas fields thins considerably in the lower inlet. And, although there is a thick sequence of Mesozoic rocks in the lower inlet, including the rocks that sourced the oil in the oil fields of the upper inlet, people tend to view the lower Cook Inlet as having relatively high geologic risk. Only 11 exploration wells have ever been drilled in the lower Cook Inlet, with two of the wells finding significant oil shows.

—Alan Bailey