Alaska State Office
| Contacts: | Ruth McCoard, 907-271-4418, rmccoard@blm.gov | |||
| KJ Mushovic, 907-271-3322, kjmushovic@blm.gov |
National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A)
oil & gas lease sale generates $898,900 in revenue
Anchorage — As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that 2 companies submitted 14 bids for the right to develop oil and gas lease tracts in the federal petroleum reserve managed by the BLM on Alaska’s North Slope. At the lease sale held in Anchorage today, the high bids totaled $898,900 on 14 tracts on approximately 160,088 acres of the 22.8-million-acre reserve.
Today’s sale builds on the current 177 authorized oil and gas leases encompassing 1.4 million acres in the Northeast and Northwest NPR-A planning areas.
“Today was the eighth sale we’ve held since 1999,” said BLM-Alaska State Director Bud Cribley. “We worked to offer tracts based on public comments, natural resource information, resource potential, and industry interest. Today’s sale included a new bidder for the offered NPR-A tracts. I am pleased at the interest these sales generate.”
The BLM offered 398 tracts comprising about 4.5 million acres in this sale. The highest bid of $74,100, or $6.51 per acre, was offered by Woodstone Resources, LLC for tract 2012-L-086, located in the Northeast planning area. The State of Alaska will receive 50 percent of the NPR-A lease sale bid receipts, or $449,450.
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that there are 896 million barrels (mmbbls) of mean technically recoverable oil and 53 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of mean technically recoverable natural gas within the NPR-A.
A map and table with complete sale results by tract are posted at the BLM-Alaska website at:http://www.blm.gov/ak.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.
Alaska State Office 222 W. 7th Ave., #13 Anchorage, AK 99513-7504