BP re-packages Alaska exploration leases for sale

Kay Cashman

Over the last year BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. has been marketing, prospect by prospect, its exploration acreage on the North Slope of Alaska. The company has significant operations elsewhere in the world, including the Gulf of Mexico, where it has been investing exploration capital.

On Nov. 22, BP’s head of external affairs, Pat Presley, confirmed rumors the company was re-packaging its lease offering and submitting a more comprehensive list of prospects outside of North Slope producing units for sale to a qualified list of bidders.

Excluded from the offering was acreage in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Brooks Range Foothills, BP spokesman Paul Laird told PNA Nov. 25.

Later in that day, Laird said BP’s offshore Liberty prospect was also not on the sale list.

“Were exploring development options for Liberty right now, so it is being excluded from acreage that were looking at giving other companies the opportunity to acquire and explore,” he said.

BP’s sale list, Laird said, has not yet been finalized, so other exploration leases could still be excluded from the final offering.

“Earlier in the year we said we were discontinuing frontier exploration in Alaska. … We’re focusing our efforts on our existing infrastructure, on viscous oil and working hard on prospects for gas,” Presley said.

When asked if BP was interested in an outright sale of the acreage or was willing to take on partners to develop some prospects, he said: “We will look at and consider all options … to see how that acreage might be made available to other parties who might be interested in investing in them in a way we are not. We’re making (oil and gas acreage) available to others more interested in taking exploration risks than we are.”