State adds leases to Beaufort lease sale

Two tracts previously deferred from the state’s upcoming 2017 Beaufort Sea areawide oil and gas lease sale, scheduled for Dec. 6, have been added to the sale. In an Oct. 20 supplemental notice the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, said the newly available lease sale tracts are BS0072 (an estimated 4,390.52 acres) and BS0075 (an estimated 4,510.22 acres).

The tracts are north of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and east of the Point Thomson unit.

BS0072 was most recently held as ADL 391374 by Samuel H. Cade (75 percent) and Daniel Donkel (25 percent), acquired in the state’s 2008 sale for $10.02 an acre. A lease extension request for ADL 391374 was denied by the division in August 2016, the denial was confirmed by the commissioner in August 2017 and it was appealed to Alaska Superior Court this September.

BS0075 is shown as ADL 389713 in division paperwork, described as a 1,948.85-acre tract most recently held by Donkel which expired in May 2011. There is also a link in the division’s files to ADL 391375, a 2,560-acre tract also most recently held by Donkel, with its status shown as “on appeal.”

ADL 389713 was originally acquired by J. Andrew Bachner and Keith Forsgren in the state’s 2000 Beaufort sale for $11.14 per acre.

The minimum bid for all tracts in the 2017 Beaufort Sea sale is $25 per acre.

The division said on its website that a tract map for the sale will be available on or after Oct. 27.

- KRISTEN NELSON

—A copyrighted oil and gas lease map from Mapmakers Alaska was a research tool used in preparing this story.