Forest takes 2 tracts at Mental Health sale

Forest Oil Corp. took two tracts at the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s 2005 oil and gas lease sale.

The Mental Health Trust Land Office opened bids at the sale Nov. 2 in Anchorage. Twenty-seven tracts with some 120,000 acres in and around the northern Cook Inlet basin were included in the sale. Forest bid $6.91 an acre for tracts 12 and 37, total bids of $33,561.87 and $26,990.46, respectively, for a sale total of $60,552.33. The tracts are on the west side of Cook Inlet, north and northeast of Tyonek, on either side of the Aurora Gas-Forest Oil Three Mile Creek unit. Tract 12 contains approximately 4,857 acres, tract 37 approximately 3,906 acres, for a total of 8,763 acres sold in the sale.

The Trust Land Office sales began in 2001, and this is the agency’s fifth sale, said Mike Franger, the agency’s senior resource manager. The authority has more than 150,000 acres under oil and gas lease.

—Kristen Nelson