Some Interest in the Alaska Peninsula in the State's Latest Oil and Gas Lease Sale

The State of Alaska held an oil and gas lease sale earlier this month for large chunks of the Cook Inlet and Alaska Peninsula Areas. A total of 43 bids were received by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas. 40 bids were received for the tracts in the Cook Inlet area-wide sale but just 3 bids were made for tracts in the Alaska Peninsula lease sale. In Cook Inlet, the 40 bids came from 8-bidders on 35 tracts encompassing over 114.2-thousand acres. Hillcorp Alaska had the high bid on 13 tracts totaling over 33.2-thousand acres. Those bids came in at over $1.1-million dollars. The Apache Alaska Corporation won 7 tracts totaling just over 30-thousand acres for a cost of over $1.9-million dollars. Cook Inlet Energy had the high bid on 4 tracts totaling over 23-thousand acres for a cost of over $763.3-thousand dollars. Other companies with winning bids include NordAq Energy, Pacific West Energy and Woodstone Resources. The Alaska Peninsula area-wide sale included 2 bidders. Novus Terra Limited won 2 tracts totaling 9.4-thousand acres at a cost of $47-thousand dollars. Auxillium Alaska Incorporated won 1 tract totaling just 880-acres. Their bid was $4.4-thousand dollars. The Division of Oil and Gas confirms that the 3 bids were the first bids for the Alaska Peninsula leases since 2007 when Shell acquired several leases. However, Shell subsequently dropped those leases. The tracts won in the latest sale are located near Port Moller.