Beaufort Sea Offshore Lease Sale Generates $42m

Oil companies on Wednesday bid more than $42m for offshore leases in the Beaufort Sea along Alaska's northern coast.

The federal Minerals Management Service, which offered the lease sale in Anchorage, said it was pleased with the results. It was the tenth federal offshore lease sale in the Beaufort Sea.

"The oil and gas resources present in the Beaufort Sea are vital to our nation's and Alaska's economy and we hope this will boost future supplies into the trans-Alaska pipeline," John Goll, regional director for the agency, said in a statement.

Companies submitted bids totaling $42.3m on 92 blocks covering about 502 million acres off Alaska's Arctic Coast. Shell again was the big bidder, accounting for more than $39m in bids. Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc., bid more than $14m to lease Flaxman Island northwest of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"Shell is committed to Alaska for the long-term and is pleased to be the apparent high bidder for a number of tracts in today's Beaufort Sea Outer Continental Shelf Lease Sale 202," Shell spokeswoman Terzah Tippin Poe said.

Not everyone was happy with the lease sale. Earlier this week, Native American and conservation groups appealed a federal government decision to approve Shell Oil's exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea. The groups want to halt Shell exploration activities off the north coast of Alaska that are scheduled to begin in June. These leases were approved in 2005.

The groups say in their lawsuit that the federal agency has failed to consider the potential effects from a crude oil spill during exploration. They fear a spill would be catastrophic, harming polar bears, bowhead whales, walrus and other marine mammals.