Murkowski signs bills moving Bristol Bay sales forward

Petroleum News

Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski has signed two bills facilitating oil and gas exploration in the Bristol Bay area in the southwest part of the state. Residents of the area approached the administration last year, asking that the state take a look at possible onshore oil and gas development, because the area’s fishing industry is in decline.

Both bills, signed March 22, passed the Alaska Senate unanimously Feb. 25 and the Alaska House unanimously March 16.

Senate Bill 265 fixes a technical hitch: state statute had only allowed the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to present oil and gas lease sale schedules to the Legislature every two years, at the beginning of the regular session, which meant a Bristol Bay areawide sale would have been delayed because a new schedule couldn’t be presented until January 2005. Proposed sales have to be on the schedule for a year before they are held, and the state wanted to do an areawide Bristol Bay sale in 2005.

SB 265 calls for annual presentation of the Division of Oil and Gas five-year proposed oil and gas leasing program, but also allows the commissioner of Natural Resources to make revisions, including additions, in the plan at any time, provided that the Legislature is notified, and allows for electronic notification: “Notification to each legislator, by electronic message or other written means, constitutes notification to the legislature under this subsection.”

In a fiscal note to SB 265, Bill Van Dyke of the Division of Oil and Gas said the amendments to the five-year schedule “will ultimately allow DNR to hold sales in the frontier areas sooner, therefore bringing the state additional revenues…”

SB 266 approves an action already taken by the commissioner of Natural Resources, closing land within the proposed Bristol Bay areawide sale to oil and gas exploration licensing and shallow natural gas leasing.

Mark Myers, director of the Division of Oil and Gas, said in a fiscal note for SB 266 that the bill “ensures that land remains available for the competitive sale program” by approving “an interim classification by the commissioner of Natural Resources closing lands in the proposed Bristol Bay (Alaska Peninsula) competitive oil and gas areawide lease sale to oil and gas exploration licensing … and shallow natural gas leasing…”