The state plans to hold a lease sale this fall on 15 million acres of state land and coastal waters to boost the flow of oil in the trans-Alaska pipeline and help satisfy the nation's craving for energy.
Up for bids in the Oct. 26 lease sale, according to a state fact sheet [http:/pdf/state_lease_sale_fact_sheet.docx], will be:
• 576 tracts (2 million acres) in the Beaufort Sea;
• 1,225 tracts (5.1 million acres) on the North Slope; and
• 1,347 tracts (7.6 million acres) in the North Slope foothills.
Gov. Sean Parnell and Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan discussed the sale today at a Washington, D.C., press conference held by the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The state says the oil potential in the proposed sale area is "enormous."
State and Alaska Native lands between the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge hold an estimated "3 to 6 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically-recoverable oil, 500 million barrels of natural gas liquids, and 24 to 44 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," the state said in the fact sheet, which noted the source for those estimates as the USGS Economic Analysis of Undiscovered Oil and Gas of the Central North Slope of Alaska, 2005.
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