State, BLM schedule back-to-back Arctic oil lease sales in November

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/article/20141002/state-blm-schedule-back-back-arctic-oil-lease-sales-november

State, BLM schedule back-to-back Arctic oil lease sales in November
Yereth Rosen
October 2, 2014

Federal and state agencies have teamed up for a fourth time to hold jointly scheduled oil and gas lease sales next month for territory across Arctic Alaska.

The Alaska Division of Oil and Gas and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management have scheduled lease sales for Nov. 19, the agencies said in separate statements. The Alaska sales -- for state territory on the central North Slope, in the Brooks Range foothills and in near-shore waters of the Beaufort Sea -- will be in the morning, officials said in their announcement. The BLM’s sale, offering leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the western North Slope, will be in the afternoon.

The three state sales will offer available onshore and offshore tracts in a region that sprawls over about 14 million acres. The BLM sale will offer 270 tracts covering about 3 million acres in the eastern part of the 23 million-acre NPR-A, the federal agency said in a formal lease announcement issued Thursday.

The state and federal agencies began coordinating their North Slope-area lease sales in 2011 after President Obama directed the BLM to hold the National Petroleum Reserve sales annually.