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Final finding for 2025 Augustine Island geothermal lease sale
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
On Jan. 10, Alaska's Oil and Gas Division director, Derek Nottingham, issued the final written finding for the 2025. Augustine Island Competitive Geothermal Lease Sale Disposal.
The division is part of the Department of Natural Resources, or DNR.
State law requires that, before approving a sale area and disposing of the land through a lease sale, the director must determine whether the disposal is in the best interest of the state. After a review, the director determined that approving the lease sale area as a competitive geothermal area and holding a lease sale for Augustine Island are in the best interest of the state.
Ten years A geothermal lease will grant a lessee the exclusive right, for a period of 10 years, to prospect for geothermal resources on state land included under the lease. DNR's commissioner has the discretion to renew the lease for an additional five-year term if the lessee is actively engaged in drilling operations.
A geothermal lease is valid for the duration of commercial production.
In making this final finding, the director considered the sale area, including its terrestrial, marine, and freshwater habitats, and the fish, birds and wildlife that use them; current uses of the area; its geothermal resource potential; reasonably foreseeable, significant effects of geothermal activities; and mitigation measures for protection of the area's resources, habitats, and uses.
The director limited the scope of this finding to an administrative review of the designation of the area as a competitive geothermal area and the lease sale, as well as applicable statutes and regulations and the facts about the land that are known to them and are material to their decision.
The director also considered the reasonably foreseeable significant effects of a disposal of interest in state land.
The type, location, duration, timing, or level of any exploration or development activities that may subsequently occur cannot be precisely determined, the director said in his decision. Therefore, the director did not speculate the possible specific effects of future exploration, development, and production activities resulting from the disposal.
The effects of future exploration, development, and production are considered at each subsequent stage, when government agencies and the public review permit applications for the specific activities proposed at specific locations in the area. However, the director did consider, in general terms, the potential effects that may occur subsequent to disposal and subsequent activities in the event that geothermal resources are discovered in commercial quantities.
Although the initial benefit to the state is the primary effect of exploration, the director said that geothermal exploration, development, and production subsequent to designating the competitive geothermal area and conducting a lease sale may result in impacts to and around the sale area and its current uses. Therefore, general mitigation measures are included to avoid, minimize, and mitigate potential negative effects. Mitigation measures address facilities and operations, reduction of impacts to habitats, fish and wildlife, harvest activities, management of fuels, hazardous substances, wastes, access, historical and cultural resources.
By mail A person who is affected by this decision, and who is eligible to appeal pursuant to AS 38.05.035(i) by having provided timely written comment or public hearing testimony on this decision, may appeal in accordance with 11 AAC 02. Any appeal must be received within 20 calendar days after the date of issuance of this decision, as defined in 11 AAC 02.040(c) and (d), and may be mailed or delivered as follows:
By mail: Commissioner, Department of Natural Resources
550 W. 7th Avenue, Suite 1400,
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
By fax: 1-907-269-8918
By email: [email protected]
Appeals and requests for reconsideration filed under 11 AAC 02 must be accompanied by the fee established in 11 AAC 05.160(d)(1)(F), which has been set at $200 under the provisions of 11 AAC 05.160(a) and (b), the director wrote in his decision.
An eligible person must first appeal this decision in accordance with 11 AAC 02 before appealing it in Superior Court.
Property description The description of the disposal area in on Augustine Island in Kamishak Bay on the west side of Lower Cook Inlet, approximately 68 miles southwest of Homer and approximately 170 miles south-southwest of Anchorage.
West of Augustine Island are the Chigmit and Alaska-Aleutian mountain ranges. Augustine Island has been augmented by numerous eruptions of Augustine Volcano from which debris avalanches and lahars have deposited sediment on the flanks of the volcanic cone and in the surrounding waters.
The North Augustine Island Competitive Geothermal Lease Sale Area (Sale Area) consists of the northern portion of Augustine Island and tidelands and adjacent waters within approximately three miles of the island.
The sale area contains about 55,771 acres of onshore and portions of tidelands and adjacent waters divided into 24 tracts (Figure 1). The state owns the land within the sale area and Augustine Island.
--KAY CASHMAN
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