Five companies have won new ten-year drilling leases in northern Alaska, Dow Jones reports.

A total of 150 tracts went under the hammer, with the five firms putting in high bids of $31 million for rights in the north-east and north-west sections of the National Petroleum Reserve.

The five successful companies were ConocoPhillips, Petro-Canada, FEX, Anadarko Petroleum and Petro-Hunt.

All high bids were accepted by the Bureau of Land Management, which has now sent out lease offers to the firms, which will be issued with the rights once bonus bid balances, annual rental and lease processing fees have been agreed and paid.

The bureau estimates that the leases could result in development of as much as 8.4 billion barrels of oil, in addition to trillions of feet of natural gas.

In other regional developments, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has recently warned that production forecasts for domestic oil sands developments in 2015 are down 400,000 barrels a day on original estimates.


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