Sale of Arctic Drilling Leases Draws an Unusual Taker

It May Be the Only One.
With a deadline looming and weak interest from oil companies, the state of Alaska may step in and buy leases in the hope of reassigning them later. Some analysts saw that as a long shot. It May Be the Only One.

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After a three-year push by the Trump administration to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling — an effort that culminated in a rush to sell leases before the White House changes hands — in the end the only taker may be the state of Alaska itself.

With a Thursday deadline for submitting bids for 10-year leases on tracts covering more than one million acres of the refuge, there is little indication that oil companies are interested in buying the rights to drill under difficult conditions, to extract more costly fossil fuels for a world that increasingly is seeking to wean itself off them.

Amid the uncertainty, a state-owned economic development corporation voted last week to authorize bidding up to $20 million for some of the leases. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity,” Frank Murkowski, an elder statesman of Alaska politics, told the board of the corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, at a meeting before the vote.

There are legal questions surrounding the action, including whether the development authority qualifies as a bidder. And environmental organizations, some Alaska Native groups and others are seeking an injunction in Federal District Court to halt the lease sales outright, arguing that they are part of a deeply flawed process by the Interior Department that, among other things, played down scientific findings about possible damage to the refuge.

But if the development authority proceeds, it sets up the possibility that when the sealed bids are opened on Jan. 6, the state may find itself the sole owner of leases. That would leave it to hope that, at some point over the next decade, interest in drilling in the refuge picks up and it can sublease tracts to someone else.

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Go figure:omfg::whyme:

Economics trumps trump---but then again he never has been good at financial matters :bleh:

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Originally Posted by Dave Grubb

It -but then again he never has been good at financial matters :bleh:

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Naw not at all.:bwaha::bwaha::bwaha::lol:

To be fair, the oil companies got the wu-flu pretty bad. I've never seen the oil patch around here this quiet. Regardless, better AK than the chi-coms. :shrug:

But there will be winners too.i don't believe I've ever seen this much transmogrification in the business world. What does the city look like?

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What does the city look like?

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I can't call it a ghost town because there are so many people that live there. I'm told (I have not been there since mid-March) that mid-town is "spotty". The financial houses have gone heavily to work at home scenarios. Retail is open but with a reduced staff and restaurants that make up a very high percentage of street traffic and ground floor leases is devastated. There are thousands of restaurants that will never come back.

Our business is way off for the first quarter. We are planning on a rise in the second quarter but time will tell.

My best "first hand" indicator is on my phone and computers. I get automatic traffic reports from the Hudson River crossings (GW Bridge, and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels) and it is obvious that the traffic is very light compared to historical levels.

Funny you should mention traffic Dave

Here is the bay area unless there is a bad lane blocking accident there are no back ups. Normally the days leading up to holidays are hell. This afternoon I went from Union City on 880 to 580 east to Livermore and never dropped below 70. It used to be stop and go every afternoon and gridlocked on pre holiday afternoons

Along with the automatic traffic reports of delays comes an explanation of the cause. In the past the most common was "due to heavy volume", now it is most commonly a break down closing a lane or an accident.