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Bidders appear to be filling in around the edges at Oct. 24 state lease sales $2.6 million in bonus bids for 74,920 acres in North Slope, Beaufort Sea areawide sales; average bids per acre nudged upward by Alpine, Point Thomson area acreage Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Bidders appeared to be filling in around existing units and acreage positions at two Alaska oil and gas lease sales Oct. 24, taking 39,680 acres in the North Slope areawide for a total of $1,639,897.60, and 35,240 acres in the Beaufort Sea areawide sale for $974,487.20, a total of $2,614.384.80.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, actually opened bids worth $2,830.269.60 at the two areawide lease sales in Anchorage, but five bids from EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. (on 28,800 acres) failed to meet the minimum required bid of $10 an acre for the sale, dropping the total for the North Slope sale by $215,884.80.
Bids opened and read at the sale in Anchorage included 15 bids for 15 tracts in the Beaufort Sea areawide, some 37,760 acres, a total or $974,487.20, and 17 bids for 17 tracts, some 68,480 acres, in the North Slope areawide sale.
High bid at Point Thomson The highest bid per acre was $6,713.06 in the Beaufort Sea sale from a bidding group of Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., Chevron USA Inc. and ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. for some 40 acres on the eastern edge of Point Thomson, an area that Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers said the state received after the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge border was redrawn. The area, Myers said, is “internal to the boundaries of the Point Thomson unit, so we wanted to get it leased.” That tract also received the highest bid: $268,522.40. The average bid per acre in the Beaufort Sea sale was $27.65.
The highest bid per acre in the North Slope areawide sale was $313 for a tract at the edge of the Colville River unit, this from unit owners ConocoPhillips Alaska and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. That tract also received the highest bid, $801,280. The average bid per acre in the North Slope sale was $41.33.
From ANWR to NPR-A Thirteen of the 15 Beaufort Sea sale bids were in the east and central areas of the sale.
At Point Thomson the ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron USA and ConocoPhillips Alaska bidding group took the one 40-acre tract on the border of ANWR ($6,713.06 an acre) and an ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron bidding group took three tracts north of the unit (7,680 acres; $13.84 an acre).
A bidding group of BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil took one track, 2,560 acres, adjacent to the Prudhoe Bay and Duck Island units, at $13.15 an acre.
An EnCana, ConocoPhillips and Chevron USA bidding group — the McCovey partners — took five leases adjacent to McCovey on the south, 12,160 acres, at prices ranging from $11.29 to $28.75 an acre. An EnCana and Chevron bidding group took three tracts (7,680 acres) to the southwest of McCovey, paying $42.69 an acre for one tract and $11.29 an acre for the other two.
On the west of the Beaufort Sea sale area, a bidding group of ConocoPhillips and Anadarko took two tracts in Harrison Bay adjacent to NPR-A acreage they own, 5,120 acres, paying $48 an acre for one tract and $16 an acre for the other.
Beaufort Sea tracts farther west were offered, but Myers said that the stipulations and mitigation measures attached to onshore acreage in the NPR-A sale, “make it hard to imagine how you could develop some of those.”
Most acreage along the Colville ®a??orth Slope areawide sale most of the acreage receiving bids was along the Colville River — with existing leaseholders picking up adjacent tracts.
A bidding group of ConocoPhillips and Anadarko, the Colville River unit owners, took five tracts, 8,320 acres, for $1,283,840, bidding from $71 to $313 an acre for the tracts. These were the only tracts in the sale with a sliding scale royalty, from a minimum of 16.67 percent to a maximum of 33.33 percent. Myers said the sliding scale is part of the state’s agreement with Arctic Slope Regional Corp. “We lease the land but they have a majority of the interest in those tracts,” he said. These tracts are along the Colville River south of the Colville River unit close to Nuiqsut, where ConocoPhillips and Anadarko are dominant leaseholders.
Farther south along the Colville, Alfred James III and AVCG Ltd. took the available tracts adjacent to existing AVCG acreage west of NPR-A. Alfred James took one tract, 3,840 acres, for $12.05 an acre, while AVCG took two tracts, 10,880 acres, at $11 an acre.
Bidding by itself, ConocoPhillips took two tracts on the southern edge of existing leases south of the Kuparuk and Prudhoe units, 5,120 acres at $14 an acre.
Union Oil Company of California took two tracts south of its own existing tracts on the Kuparuk River in the far south the North Slope sale area, 11,520 acres at $10.28 an acre.
ConocoPhillips biggest player In the two sales, ConocoPhillips Alaska took the most acreage — 19,671 acres, 26.26 percent of the total — bidding by itself and in several bidding groups and spent $1,275,451, 48.8 percent of total sales dollars, averaging $64.84 an acre for the tracts and shares of tracts it took, driven by the $120.36 an acre average it spent with partner Anadarko on the five tracts near Nuiqsut.
Anadarko was second in dollars, $347,981, 13.31 percent of the total at the sales, and, driven by the acreage near Nuiqsut, had the highest per-acre average in the sales, $89.72, over the 3,878 acres it acquired in two bidding partnerships with ConocoPhillips.
Unocal was second in acreage, taking 15.4 percent (11,520) acres, but only paying 4.5 percent of the dollar total, $118,425.60, for its $10.28 an acre bids.
AVCG LLC was third in acres at 14.5 percent, for 10,880 acres, but only spent 4.6 percent of the dollars, $119,680, with bids of $11 per acre.
EnCana was fourth in acres at 13.7 percent (10,265 acres), but only spent 8.1 percent of the dollars at the sales, $211,875, bidding in two different groups, averaging $20.64 an acre.
Chevron was fifth in acres, at 10.12 percent, for a 7,586-acre share in four bidding groups. The company spent only 8 percent of the sale’s dollars, $208,556, averaging $27.49 an acre.
ExxonMobil took 5.3 percent of the acreage, 3,971 acres, and accounted for 5.9 percent of dollars at the sale, $154,195, an average of $38.83 an acre.
Alfred James took 5.13 percent of sale acreage, 3,840 acres, and spent 1.77 percent of the dollars, $46,272, $12.05 an acre for one tract.
BP, in three different bidding groups, accounted for 4.42 percent of sale acres, 3,309, and 5.05 percent of sale dollars, $131,949, an average of $39.88 an acre.
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