The state of Alaska plans to delay an oil and natural gas lease sale to December this year from late October to add land for exploration and increase promotion of the auction, Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan said.
“We haven’t given a definitive date yet, but it will probably be at the beginning of December,” Sullivan said yesterday in an interview at his Anchorage office. “We have the potential to gain back some more leases that either have expired or have come out of litigation, and we want to be able to get as many leases into that lease sale as possible.”
The auction of 14.7 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, on the North Slope and in the North Slope foot hills was scheduled for Oct. 26. The state wants to boost production and increase the flow of crude through the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, the state’s oil and gas division said on June 9.
Alaska’s production has declined every year since 2002, according to the U.S. Energy Department, as less oil is pumped from fields including Prudhoe Bay, operated by BP Plc, and Kuparuk, run by Conocophillips. August production averaged 549,268 barrels a day, down from 555,006 a year earlier, according to the Alaska Tax Division.
The 800-mile (1,287-kilometres) pipeline is scheduled to operate until 2035 and may close after that as production wanes, Richard Newell, head of the Energy Information Administration, said on Feb. 3. The Trans Alaska Pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope to Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in the U.S.
Oil producers without a presence in the state have expressed interest in the sale, Sullivan said yesterday, without identifying any companies.
The Obama administration plans to sell oil and natural-gas leases in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve by the end of the year, the Interior Department said on June 16.
