BLM nets $31M in Alaska lease sale, but producers face myriad challenges

摘要

The Interior Department held an oil and natural gas lease sale on a portion of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska last week, netting nearly $31 million in bids. But producers could face difficulties in moving oil from the reserve to market, as well as lawsuits by environmental groups. The Bureau of Land Management, a branch of Interior, offered some 4.8 million acres in the sale, but only 1.6 million acres were sold. All told, NPR-A spans about 23 million acres in northwestern Alaska. Wednesday's lease sale only included parts of the northeast and northwest section of NPR-A, but overall, the US Geological Survey has estimated that the entire reserve could hold as much as 9.3 billion barrels of oil and 59.7 Tef of gas.