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Show June Oil And Gas Lease Sale Largest Ever In Utah ' SALT LAKE CITY - June 28, 2004 The June Oil and Gas Lease Sale held last Friday, June 25, was the largest ever in Utah both in terms of acres leased and total bids received. BLM leased 123 parcels, consisting con-sisting of 203,077 acres. The sale netted $9,951,502, half of which will be given to the State of Utah. "Mineral resources on Utah public lands play a key role in meeting energy demands in the Rocky Mountain Region. With one-third of the nation's oil and gas production coming from the public lands, oil and gas leasing helps increase domestic production produc-tion of clean-burning natural gas and other mineral resources," said Utah BLM Deputy State Director of Lands and Minerals Kent Hoffman. A total of 164 parcels containing con-taining more than 281,253 acres of land were offered at the oral auction on Friday. Bids ranged from $2 to $650 per acre. The high bid totaling $254,800 was received from Baseline Minerals Inc., located in Denver, Colo., for parcel UT-221 UT-221 on a 391.75 acre parcel in Uintah County, Utah. Armstrong Resources submitted the second highest bid in the amount of $648,000 for a 1 ,800 acre parcel in Sevier County, Utah. The parcels that were not bid on will be open for noncompetitive bid for the next two years. While the June Lease Sale was the largest in Utah in terms of acreages, 133,146 acres were deferred or deleted from the sale. BLM considered resource information prior to deciding the offering, including new information infor-mation on wilderness characteristics. character-istics. None of the lands inventoried inven-toried by BLM and found to have wilderness characteristics (all or part of 43 parcels totaling 42,987 acres) were offered at this sale. Lands nominated in Dirty Devil, Desolation Canyon, Jack Canyon, Bull Canyon, and White River were not offered at the sale. Roughly two-thirds of the lands that were offered were located in areas- where exploration explo-ration for oil and gas has been sparse in the past (Juab, Millard, Sanpete and Sevier counties). "Interest in new locations reflects escalating energy prices and increasing demands. New advances in mineral extraction technology have also made development in some areas more feasible," said Hoffman. Oil and gas production in Utah contributes to meeting local and regional energy needs. Last year, 138 billion cubic feet of natural gas was produced on public lands in Utah, providing enough energy to heat more than 1.6 million homes. Natural gas production on Utah public lands is critical since current infrastructure infra-structure does not enable natural gas to be imported from outside North America. Four million barrels of oil were also produced (See SALE on page 3A) Lease Sale From Front Page on Utah public lands in 2003, enough to produce 79.6 million gallons of gasoline and 38 million mil-lion gallons of dieselheating fuel as well as other products. Lease parcels are made up of lands that have been determined to be open for leasing through BLM's land use planning process, and are either nominated nominat-ed or requested by the public. Half of the royalties from mineral miner-al development and leasing goes back to the States. Since the pas- ' sage for the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920, the State of Utah has received $962,468,000 from mineral revenues on federally managed public lands. |
