The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Utah office said it broke records for most acreage, revenues, and bidders in its quarterly oil and gas lease sale earlier this month. The BLM said 159 parcels, covering 245,775 acres received bids and the sale drew $28 million, half of which will go to the state.

“It is interesting to note that the focus of the bidding seemed to be both on known producing areas in the Uintah Basin and in frontier areas in the central portion of the state that have been previously undiscovered,” said Kent Hoffman, Utah BLM deputy state director for lands and minerals. The BLM noted that exploration in the Uintah Basin has focused on shallow areas up to 8,000 feet, but high gas prices and new technologies have enabled companies to begin tapping the huge gas reserves at 10,000-20,000 feet deep.

A total of 219 parcels containing more than 357,350 acres of land were offered at the oral auction last Wednesday. Bids ranged from $2 to $2,010 per acre. The high bid totaling $3.1 million was received from Sampson Resources Co. based in Tulsa for a 1,876-acre parcel in Uintah County. Turner Petro Land from Sandy, UT submitted the second highest bid in the amount of $2.5 million for a 1,566-acre parcel in Uintah County. Coming in third was Baseline Minerals from Denver with a bid of $1.3 million for a 1,034-acre parcel also located in Uintah County. The parcels that were not bid on will be open for noncompetitive bid for the next two years.

While the September lease sale was the largest in Utah in terms of acreage, roughly 190,000 acres were deferred or deleted from the sale to protect other resources. Once an operator proposes exploration or development on a BLM-issued lease, the Bureau carries out further environmental analysis and determines the site-specific need for various types of impact-limiting or mitigation measures.

Last year, 138 Bcf of natural gas and four million barrels of oil were produced on public lands in Utah.

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