ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. was the big spender in the Bureau of Land Management‘s (BLM) quarterly oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City Tuesday, bidding $38.8 million for four parcels covering 3,982 acres in the Uinta Basin in Carbon County, UT. The BLM received bonus bids totaling $49.4 million for 8,271 acres in 11 of the 13 offered parcels. The other major bidder was Bill Barrett Corp., which won two parcels covering 1,773 acres, also in Carbon County, with bonus bids totaling nearly $10 million. The producer submitted the highest total bid per acre: $12,100 on parcel No. 20 containing 811 acres.

Fraud and market manipulation “present a significant risk” to the markets overseen by FERC and undermine its goal of assuring efficient energy services for consumers at a reasonable cost, according to an Annual Report on Enforcement released Thursday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission‘s (FERC) Office of Enforcement (OE). Approximately three-quarters of the investigations opened by OE this year involved allegations of market manipulation or false statements, according to the report. Among the enforcement efforts highlighted in the report was FERC’s work with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to investigate the causes and aftermath of natural gas end-use customer shutoffs and natural gas and electric infrastructure freeze-ups in the Southwestern states last winter (see Daily GPI, May 11).

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