Light bidding in NPR-A lease sale
As oil lease sales go, it seemed a bust. The federal government’s Dec. 12 lease sale Wednesday in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, on the North Slope, pulled in $1.5 million and 16 bids from three companies. Interior Department officials looked at the upside: “It was better than last year, when we got only seven bids,” Assistant Interior Secretary Joe Bal- ash said. Still, the results seemed dismal compared with $28 million the state of Alaska pulled in Novem- ber when it auctioned off tracts on state-owned lands a few miles to the east, across the Colville River. The river is the boundary between the federal petroleum reserve and state lands on the North Slope.
The reserve, which is west of the large producing fields on the North Slope totals 23 million acres but most of it is not available for exploration including lands that are the most prospective for oil discoveries.
ConocoPhillips and two independent companies offered up $1.53 million in bonus bids for 16 tracts on 174,440 acres in the area of the reserve open to bidding. The agency had made 254 tracts totaling 2.85 million acres available. ConocoPhillips acquired five tracts; independent Emerald House LLC acquired 10 and Nordaq Energy, another independent, won rights to one tract.
Balash said ConocoPhillips’ bids were a positive sign because the company already has a strong lease position in the area with tracts acquired in the 2016 NPR-A sale. The company’s desire to add to its ex- tensive land position reflects confidence, Balash said. The company has been exploring and has made three discoveries including Willow, a prospect that could hold up to 750 million barrels of recoverable oil.
Most of the bids in the Dec. 12 sale were for tracts south of existing leases mostly held by Con- ocoPhillips and north of Umiat, the site of a small 1950s-era oil discovery by the U.S. Navy. Umiat is on the Colville River at the southeast corner of the NPR-A. The reserve was formerly Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 under management by the Navy until it was transferred to the BLM by Congress in 1976 and renamed as National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Light bidding for the acreage available was not a surprise to Interior officials because the more prospective acreage further north near the “Barrow Arch,” a geologic formation that is highly productive across the North Slope, is not available for exploration. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages the NPR-A, hopes some of this might be made available in the 2020 NPR-A sale following possible changes in BLM’s Integrated Activity Plan for the reserve, which governs leasing.
Some coastal wetlands in the northeastern part of the reserve have always been off-limits to exploration because of their ecological sensitivity. The previous federal administration, under President Barak Obama, significantly expanded the restricted areas in the current land management plan to include lands judged by state biologists to have relatively low habitat value, but which do have oil potential. BLM is in the middle of a “scoping” process of an Environmental Impact Statement for revisions to the land plan. If Interior can keep to its policy of completing EIS documents within a year these more prospective areas might be offered in BLM’s 2019 or 2020 lease sales.

Feige names new DNR leads
Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Corri Feige named Sara Longan as deputy commissioner for oil and gas and resources attorney Peter Caltagirone as a special assistant. Longan has 14 years’ experience with the state. Caltagirone, an attorney, has represented DNR as an assistant attorney general and worked recently with the Alaska Oil and Gas Association as regulatory and legal affairs manager.