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One oil and gas company bids in state sale

2022 Cook Inlet lease sale
Department of Natural Resources
/
Division of Oil and Gas

An Alaska oil and gas company, Furie Operating Alaska, acquired two offshore leases in Cook Inlet for about $100,000 during the most recent state sale last week.

Furie was the only bidder in the auction. That’s been pretty standard for the recent slate of state-run sales.

Last year, the Texas-based company Strong Energy Resourcesalso bought leases. For several years before that, Hilcorp was the only company to buy leases in state sales.

Furie has been a subsidiary of HEX since Furie went bankrupt in 2019. It owns the large offshore Kitchen Light Unit in Cook Inlet.

And the two tracts it purchased in this sale — totaling 5,000 acres — sit on either side of that unit and flank the Julius R Platform, where Furie is already drilling and producing.

Furie already owned these two tracts once before. It relinquished them in 2021.

The recent sale was for state-owned leases only. The Biden Administration canceled a pending federal oil and gas sale in the inlet last month, citinga lack of industry interest. It also comes amid a warning from producer Hilcorp that it might not be able to meet the Railbelt’s natural gas needsbeyond its current contracts.

A simultaneous state sale for oil and gas tracts, on the Alaska Peninsula, did not receive any bids. The department hasn’t received a bid for a lease sale there since 2014.

Sabine Poux is a producer and reporter for the Brave Little State podcast of Vermont Public. She was formerly news director and evening news host at KDLL in Kenai.

Originally from New York, Sabine has lived and reported in Argentina and Vermont and Kenai.
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