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Cook Inlet areawide nets $1.2 million Escopeta Production-Alaska takes 14 tracts; newcomer Saddleback Resources takes five at state oil and gas lease sale Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
The state drew $1,215,046.40 in apparent high bids May 9 at its Cook Inlet areawide sale, receiving 31 bids for 30 tracts, 135,040 acres, from six bidders and attracting one new bidder, Saddleback Resources LLC of Irving, Texas, which also placed the highest bid per acre at $22.18.
Escopeta Production-Alaska Inc. topped the Cook Inlet bidder list, taking all 14 tracts on which it bid for a total of $776,217.60, 63.9 percent of the Cook Inlet total apparent high bids.
Saddleback Resources took the five tracts on which it bid for $214,775, 17.7 percent of total apparent high bids.
Richard Wagner took seven of eight tracts on which he bid for $125,049.60, 10.3 percent of apparent high bid dollars in the sale.
Paul Craig took two tracts for $38,989.40, 3.2 percent of apparent high bid dollars. Forest Oil Corp. and Union Oil Company of California each took one tract, Forest paying $30,355.20, 2.5 percent of high bids and Unocal paying $29,664, 2.4 percent of high bids.
Tracts widespread in Cook Inlet The Cook Inlet tracts which drew bids were spread out from the lower peninsula to just east of Wasilla — most were between Kenai and Anchorage.
The single tract which Unocal took is on the lower peninsula east of the shut-in North Fork gas field. Unocal has leases in the area and Standard Oil Company of California drilled the 1 Anchor River well on the acreage in 1961 to a total depth of 6,896 feet. The well was plugged and abandoned in early 1962; no pay interval was reported.
Richard Wagner of Fairbanks took seven of eight tracts on which he bid, and his tracts were the most widely spread of any bidder in the sale, from an offshore tract at Anchor Point on the lower peninsula to the farthest north tract in the sale, southeast of Wasilla.
On the east side, Wagner took a tract which straddles the shoreline north of the Birch Hill gas field. In Cook Inlet, he took two tracts off the East Forelands west and south of the Dillon platform. On the west side, he took one tract south of the Pretty Creek gas field and one tract northwest of the Lewis River gas field. Wagner already holds some 9,000 acres of state oil and gas leases.
Paul Craig took two west side leases, one of which, south of the Pretty Creek gas field, was also bid on by Wagner. The other Craig tract is north of the Ivan River gas field. Craig has no other leases currently, but formerly held leases as Trading Bay Energy Corp.
Forest Oil Corp. added one tract to a block it holds in the inlet south of the Tyonek platform.
The new player in this sale, Saddleback Resources LLC of Irving, Texas, took a block of five tracts in Cook Inlet adjacent to the southern boundary of the North Cook Inlet unit.
Escopeta Production-Alaska Inc. of Houston added one tract to two others it holds northwest of the Lewis River gas field on the west side, and 13 tracts to a group of tracts it already holds, onshore and offshore the Kenai Peninsula from southwest of Nikiski following the coastline around East Forelands and running north and west into the inlet.
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