No substantial new info for spring sales

The director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas has issued a decision of no substantial new information for the 2017 Cook Inlet and Alaska Peninsula areawide lease sales.

No date has been set for the sales, typically held in Anchorage in May.

Best interest findings for the sales date from 2009 for Cook Inlet and from 2014 for the Alaska Peninsula. The Cook Inlet finding was supplemented in 2010 and 2011; there have been decisions of no substantial new information since then for that sale. The Alaska Peninsula sale has had decisions of no substantial new information since the 2014 final finding.

The Alaska Peninsula draws limited interest, with no bids in the most recent sales in 2015 and 2016. Three tracts received bids in the 2014 sale, but none of those leases remain active.

Cook Inlet is an active exploration and production basin, but interest in sales has varied. The state received no bids for the inlet sale in 2016, the first time that has occurred in a Cook Inlet areawide sale (the state began offering areawide sales in the late 1990s).

Over the last 10 years bidding in the Cook Inlet sale has ranged from some $81,000 in 2009 to $8.2 million in 2011, when Apache Corp., which had entered the inlet the previous year, made a huge play for acreage, dominating the sale. That dollar volume was the highest since a $65 million sale in 1993, following ARCO Alaska’s Sunfish discovery.

- KRISTEN NELSON