By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Oct. 27 -- The US Minerals Management Service in Anchorage has scheduled March 2007 for its next oil and gas lease sale in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's North Slope. The sale area includes 1,877 blocks covering 9.7 million acres.
The Beaufort Sea could contain as much as 7 billion bbl of conventionally recoverable oil and 32 tcf of gas, MMS estimates. Proposed royalty suspensions on oil and condensate production will be included, subject to price thresholds, MMS said. Discovered resources would boost supplies into the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
The sale area, from the Canadian border on the east to a point near Barrow on the west, excludes offshore areas near Barrow and Kaktovik, where the Inupiat conduct bowhead whale subsistence hunts. All offshore oil and gas activity must be coordinated with the whalers during these hunts.
Six other lease stipulations will minimize environmental effects on the Inupiat people from area oil and gas development.
