Interior sets NPR-A lease sale date

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Sept. 25 that the Bureau of Land Management will hold this year’s annual National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale Nov. 7.

The State of Alaska will hold its 2012 North Slope, Beaufort Sea and North Slope Foothills oil and gas lease sales on that same date.

The NPR-A lease sale will include 400 tracts, covering some 4.5 million acres.

This compares to the 2011 NPR-A sale which made 283 tracts and 3 million acres available.

BLM’s draft determination of National Environmental Policy Act adequacy is available at www.blm.gov/ak

“The energy resources of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska are essential to meeting our nation’s energy demands and will enhance domestic energy production and decrease dependency on foreign oil sources,” Salazar said in announcing the sale date.

The comment period and tract nominations for the sale ran from May 15 through June 29.

A notice of sale will be submitted to the Federal Register to be published at least 30 days prior to the sale, which will be the eighth oil and gas lease sale in NPR-A since 1999.

Last year’s sale generated 17 winning bids covering some 120,000 acres.

There are currently 186 authorized oil and gas leases, some 1.48 million acres, within the NPR-A planning areas.

Only exploratory drilling has occurred within NPR-A, but Interior said that permits were issued to ConocoPhillips Alaska in 2011 to allow for future production of NPR-A oil and gas resources.

—Petroleum News