State nets $4.5 million in its fall “areawide” North Slope lease sale

The state of Alaska received 63 bids totaling $4.53 million in a North Slope “areawide” sale.

Companies bid on 121,412 acres of onshore North Slope tracts as well as on nine tracts, totaling $575,146, for state offshore acreage in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.

This was Alaska’s annual fall areawide sale for the North Slope, in which all unleased state lands are offered to companies for exploration. A similar areawide sale is held in the spring for Cook Inlet and other areas in southern Alaska.

State-owned acreage in the “foothills” region of the southern North Slope were also offered but received no bids, according to Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, or DNR.

The results overall are part of an uptick in Alaska exploration activity over the last year, DNR said in its announcement. There were 11 different companies bidding, which put this sale in the top ten highest average dollars per acre since 1998 when the areawide lease sale program began, state officials said.

This is also the first time since 2018 that the Division has seen competing bids on the same tracts with tracts adjacent to the Quokka unit near the Colville River, where discoveries have been made recently, as well as acreage along the north edge of the Prudhoe Bay field, the largest in northern Alaska.

“Alaskans will be pleased to see our oil resource, which seeds critical investments like our permanent fund, continue to enjoy international interest and support,” said Acting Commissioner of Natural Resources, Akis Gialopsos, in the DNR announcement.

The North Slope is seeing one of its busiest exploration and delineation seasons in years and more wells are being permitted for the coming winter drilling season, according to the DNR announcement. New activity includes exploration in Oil Search Alaska’s newly formed Quokka and Pikka units, long-reach drilling success by ConocoPhillips in the Colville River unit, ongoing well testing at the Alkaid Unit in the central North Slope by Great Bear Pantheon, and unit expansion efforts in the Prudhoe Bay unit.