Province receives $50M for drilling rights

February’s sale of petroleum and natural gas rights brought in $50.7 million in revenue — the second-highest February sale on record, the Ministry of the Economy said in a press release Thursday.

The Febr uary sale brought total land sale revenue for the 2013-14 fiscal year to $106.2 million. By comparison, the February 2013 sale netted $11.9 million in revenue, bringing final land sale revenues for the 2012-13 fiscal year to $88.9 million.

“We’re averaging over $10 million a sale in the last couple of years, which historically would be considered quite strong sales,’’ said Energy and Resources Minister Tim McMillan. “We had a couple of (sales) where we shot the lights out five or six years ago, but (in) this sale, we’re back up over $50 million.’’

The Weyburn-Estevan area received the lion’s share of bonus bids with sales of $46.6 million. The Lloydminster area was next at $2.7 million, followed by the Swift Current area at $731,874 and the Kindersley-Kerrobert area at $707,351. The average price paid was $1,816 per hectare with particular interest shown in Bakken areas along the Saskatchewan-U.S. border.

“We’ve seen the Bakken become very important in the last few years. We’ve seen the technology used to unlock the Bakken being utilized in other formations in that same area. A couple of the pieces that drove this sale were step-outs from what is traditionally the really hot drilling areas,” McMillan said.

The highest price paid for a single parcel was $14.1 million by Stomp Energy Ltd., which acquired the 2,072-hectare exploration licence north of Oungre. The highest price on a perhectare basis was $16,148 by Sandstone Land & Mineral Company Ltd., which bid $4.2 million for a 259-hectare lease north of Lampman.

The next sale of Crown drilling rights will be held April 7.