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) on Wednesday held a lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) that generated nearly $2.9 million.

Wednesday, the BLM offered 408 tracts comprising about 4.5 million acres in this sale. Three companies submitted 22 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. The high bids totaled $2,888,153 on 22 tracts encompassing about 245,293 acres.

“I am pleased this lease sale is taking place following the completion of the final management plan for the NPR-A this past February,” said Neil Kornze, BLM’s Principal Deputy Director, who was on hand to kick-off the lease sale. “This is one of the largest lease sales ever held by the BLM in terms of acreage.”

Wednesday’s sale is the ninth since 1999. Total bids received for the eight prior sales totaled more than $286 million. Currently, 185 leases cover more than 1.5 million acres in the NPR-A. Tracts available for lease are consistent with the NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan finalized in February.

The highest bid of $200,103, or $52.11 per acre, was offered today by ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. for tract 2013-H-167. The State of Alaska will receive 50 percent of the NPR-A lease sale bid receipts, or $1,442,576.

The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that there are 896 million barrels of mean technically recoverable oil and 53 trillion cubic feet of mean technically recoverable natural gas within the 22.8-million-acre NPR-A.

A map and table with complete sale results by tract are posted at the BLM-Alaska website at: https://www.blm.gov/ak

Source:BLM