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 Resources also 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, citing a 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 needs beyond 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.
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