State raises minimum bids to $35 an acre in annual North Slope and Beaufort Sea oil and gas lease sales

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, has held North Slope areawide sales almost every year since 1998. Each sale offers the available state acreage in its area, meaning unleased tracts that have not been deferred, and acreage that draws no bids can be offered again in a later sale. Last year the division said it would accept bids on more than 8 million acres across the three areas. It later reported bids on 287 tracts covering more than 519,000 acres, with $17.5 million in cash bonuses, the most tracts and acreage for the combined sales since 2014.

These state sales are separate from federal leasing. In March, a federal sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska drew $163.7 million in high bids on 1.3 million of the 5.5 million acres offered, the most revenue and the most tracts with bids of any sale in the reserve.

The division published a combined notice for this year's Beaufort Sea Areawide 2026W, North Slope Areawide 2026W and North Slope Foothills Areawide 2026 sales in the Alaska Online Public Notices system on Sept. 28. Bidders must qualify with the division by 4 pm Nov. 9 and submit bids online through Efficient Markets, according to the sale announcement.

The notice lists 1,741 of the North Slope region's 3,121 tracts, which range from 160 to 5,760 acres; 817 of 818 tracts, about 4.3 million acres, in the Foothills; and 298 tracts, about 865,000 acres, in the Beaufort Sea. Royalties are fixed at 16.67 percent, or 12.5 percent in the Foothills and the southern part of the North Slope area, and leases carry 10-year primary terms.

The North Slope area is mostly onshore, between the Staines River and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the east and the Colville River and National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the west. Some of its tracts are jointly owned by the state and Arctic Slope Regional Corp. The Foothills area runs south to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. The Beaufort Sea area is mostly offshore, from the Canadian border to Point Barrow, out to the three-mile line between state and federal waters. Last year all nine Beaufort Sea tracts that drew bids went to one bidder, Samuel Cade, around the Point Thomson and Greater Point Thomson units. All three sale areas are in the North Slope Borough.

The division says offering acreage on a regular schedule gives companies a stable, predictable leasing program. Acreage figures before a sale are estimates, and a lease's legal description and final acreage are set after a bid is received. The division requested new information about the three areas in February and on April 1 determined that the material it received did not warrant supplementing its existing best-interest findings.

In a general assessment not specific to these sales, the federal Marine Mammal Commission says offshore oil and gas activity in the Arctic poses risks to marine mammals and to the Alaska Native communities that depend on them, from noise, contamination and disruption of seafloor habitat, and that the greatest risk is an oil spill.

The sale notices do not award leases. After reviewing bids, the division sends award notices no earlier than 60 days after bid opening, and successful bidders must make the required payments before leases are issued.