Federal sale follows state offering Some Beaufort Sea NPR-A sections excluded Anchorage — The US Bureau of Land Management will hold its annual lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on December 11, the agency announced Tuesday. Three hundred and fifty tracts covering 3.98 million acres will be offered for competitive bid. The federal sale will occur two days after Alaska offers unleased state land east of the NPR-A in the central North Slope as well as state submerged lands in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. That sale is planned December 9. BLM and the state annually offer unleased tracts on both state lands and the federal petroleum reserve. The NPR-A sale is in parts of the reserve that are open to oil and gas development, mostly in the northeast part. Several oil discoveries have been made in the area in recent years and two small projects are now […]