THE LINK: OCTOBER 2023 32 Providing innovative multidisciplinary services since 1979. 907.561.1011 | PNDENGINEERS.COM nuiqsut bridge | north slope, ak — JUNEAU, ALASKA — AVAILABLE STATEWIDE operations@coastalhelicopters.com 907-789-5600 www.coastalhelicopters.com ✓ CONSTRUCTION ✓ EXPLORATION ✓ CONTRACT ✓ SUPPORT ✓ CHARTER State of Alaska aims to stimulate competition In a major shift, Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas will offer leases in Cook Inlet this fall that are free of the traditional state cash bonus bid and gross royalty and will instead allow bidding by net profits share for leases, state officials said Aug. 9 in an interview. This will be an areawide sale that will make 2.8 million acres of unleased offshore and onshore stateowned acreage available. The move allow net profits bidding is an effort to induce new Cook Inlet exploration mainly for natural gas by improving the economics and reducing explorers’ risk on new discoveries, said John Crowther, Alaska’s Deputy Commissioner of Natural Resources. “There will still be a fixed cash bonus required to weed out speculators who just want to tie up acreage,” he said. Alaska holds areawide sales of unleased lands yearly in different parts of the state including Cook Inlet, and cash-bonus bidding and fixed royalty, usually 12.5% of gross revenues, is the norm. The state’s other areawide lease sales planned in 2023 this fall will follow the usual format with cash bonus bids and fixed royalty. These include the annual area-wide lease sales on the North Slope, south foothills of the slope, the Beaufort Sea and the Alaska Peninsula in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska. Stimulating exploration in Cook Inlet is a major priority for Alaska because the region supplies natural has for space heating and power generation for Alaska’s major communities, which are in southcentral Alaska. Existing gas fields in the Inlet are declining and state geologists and engineers in the oil and gas division predict that gas production will fall below demand beginning in 2027. Net profits bidding in Cook Inlet lease sale
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