Locator: 49848LEASESALES.
Boom! In what universe is an acre of land -- minerals -- worth $220,000? In the Bakken, a 640-acre spaced well with 500,000 bbls cumulative oil at $50 / bbl at the wellhead yields: $40,000 / acre? If that $220,000 is not a typo, one needs to study this -- what does it mean?
New Mexico sold 16 parcels totaling over 7,500 acres for $58.26 million in its quarterly oil and gas lease sale, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has said.
“This is the third highest value for highest bid/acre for a parcel for BLM [Bureau of Land Management]”, the DOI said in a statement online.
The average high bid per acre was about $86,000 while the average high bid per parcel was around $19.2 million, according to results published on the BLM’s National Fluids Lease Sale System (NFLSS).
Devon acquired a 480-acre tract of land in Lea County in a bid of $16.8 million, the most paid by any one energy firm, $35,000 / acre.
The Federal Abstract Company paid nearly $6.5 million for a quarter-section of land in Lea County while R&R Royalty offered $3.5 million for 80-acres, also in Lea County, New Mexico, $42,625 / acre and $43,750 / acre..
The Carlsbad Current-Argus reported Pride Energy paid $3.2 million for 200 and 400 acre tracts of land in Eddy County. That data point is not clear, but I assume it was $3.2 million for one 200-acre tract and another $3.2 million for a separate 400-acre tract.
