REGINA - The April public offering of Crown petroleum and natural gas rights in Saskatchewan, held Tuesday, has generated more than $19.3 million in revenue for the province, more than 10 times the revenue generated by the April 2021 offering.
The April sale is the first of six oil and gas public offerings scheduled for the 2022-23 fiscal year. The previous five sales raised $6.1 million in February 2022, $1.4 million in December 2021, $1.9 million in October, $3.1 million in August, and $0.5 million in June 2021.
With this result, public offerings for the 2022-23 fiscal year have already exceeded 2021-22's total of $14,988,127.34.
Of the 208 parcels offered, 169 parcels received acceptable bids, representing over 23,000 total hectares. Four parcels received bids that were rejected as unacceptable after a technical review, and no bids were submitted for the remaining 35 parcels. The average bonus bid was $816.80 per hectare with the highest acceptable bid at $24,318.44 per hectare.
The Estevan area produced the highest interest, bringing in more than $17.1 million for 142 parcels totalling 11,890.306 hectares. Seventeen of those parcels alone received total bonus bids of $12.1 million.
The next sale of the current 2022-23 fiscal year is scheduled for June 7.