MMS issues proposal for next Beaufort Sea lease sale

The U.S. Minerals Management Service announced its proposal for its next Beaufort Sea oil and gas lease sale, scheduled for March 2007, on Oct. 26.

The proposed notice outlines the terms of Beaufort Sea Sale 202, and describes the proposed sale area, economic incentives, and requirements for protecting the human, coastal and marine environment.

The sale area includes approximately 1,877 blocks encompassing about 9.7 million acres that extend from the Canadian border on the east to near Barrow on the west, but exclude offshore areas near Barrow and Kaktovik used by the Inupiat for bowhead whale subsistence hunts.

Throughout the sale area MMS said it will require offshore oil and gas activities be “coordinated with the Inupiat whalers during their subsistence hunt.”

MMS developed six other lease stipulations to help minimize effects to the environment and to the Inupiat people from any development of the area’s oil and gas resources. The stipulations include site-specific bowhead whale monitoring, consultation with local subsistence communities, booming for fuel transfers, and lighting requirements for protection of spectacled and Steller’s eiders.

The proposed notice also includes proposed royalty suspensions on the production of oil and condensate, subject to price thresholds. The information is available online at www.mms.gov/alaska.

MMS estimates that the Beaufort Sea could contain about 7 billion barrels of oil and 32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (mean estimate of conventionally recoverable resources).

Editor’s note: Watch for the full story in the Nov. 5 issue of Petroleum News.