Anchorage Daily News

The state brought in more than $9.1 million in apparent high bids at two oil and gas lease sales last week, more than $6.5 million from onshore North Slope leases and more than $2.6 million from Beaufort Sea leases.

The areas up for lease have been offered before, and the bidding could have been relatively light. But a company called 70 & 148 LLC of Denver bid almost $6.9 million, accounting for 75 percent of the dollar value of high bids.

Bill Armstrong of Armstrong Oil & Gas of Denver said after the sale that 70 & 148 LLC is "another Armstrong affiliate."

Armstrong sold its North Slope and Beaufort Sea interests to Eni Petroleum in 2005 and has since acquired Cook Inlet basin acreage.

The state received 72 bids from seven bidders or bidding groups for 60 tracts in the North Slope sale, and 38 bids from nine bidders or bidding groups for 32 tracts in the Beaufort Sea sale.

"New entrants in the Alaska oil and gas industry are motivated to try new concepts to develop prospects that may have been overlooked to date," said Kevin Banks, state director of oil and gas. "The economy of Alaska is enhanced when these newcomers can join those active companies already here as part of a vibrant, diversified industry," he said, noting that half of the bonus bids received, about $4.55 million, would be deposited in the Permanent Fund savings account.

The $9.1 million in apparent high bids compares high bids of $2.1 million and $2.6 million for the same areas during the last two years respectively.

INTEREST IN KUPARUK AREA

Armstrong said 70 &148 picked up acreage, "In and around where we picked up leases when we first came to Alaska in 2001, northeast and northwest of Kuparuk and south of Kuparuk, generally in the Kuparuk area -- actually in every direction from Kuparuk except east of the unit." Kuparuk lies west of Prudhoe Bay and is the Slope's second largest oil field.

When asked how many prospects his company had identified in the acreage it picked up at the lease sale, Armstrong said there were "a lot of prospects that we identified in the old days, as well as some new ones."

Other bidders for onshore leases included:

• A bidding group of the BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., Conoco Phillips Alaska Inc., Exxon Mobil Production Co. and Chevron, $150,048 for a Beaufort tract on the northern edge of the Prudhoe Bay unit in the area of the Niakuk field. Separately, Conoco bid $106,317 for a tract on the edge of the Colville River unit to the west.

• Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska, $783,027 for one tract next to its Oooguruk oil field.

•FEX LP, $590,400 total for six tracts.

• J. Andrew Bachner, $52,582 for two tracts immediately south of the Badami oil field.

• Savant Alaska, $27,674 for a single tract south of Badami. The company also bid $27,674 for an offshore tract nearby.

• AVCG, $45,440 for a single tract west of the Colville River unit. AVCG had high bids totaling $83,200 on two adjacent offshore tracts east of Badami.

• A partnership of Samuel H. Cade (75 percent) and Daniel K. Donkel (25 percent), $280,992 for five Beaufort Sea tracts. These tracts stretch across the top of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from east of the Point Thomson oil and gas field almost to the Canadian border.

A bidding group of Sun-West Oil & Gas, Michael Shearn and Shane Spear took a single tract for $52,281.

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