Oil firms snap up Utah land

Among oil and gas players who turned out for Utah's largest government lease auction on Tuesday, Byron Wixom stood out for running up bids on some choice parcels.

Wixom, the manager of a family leasing partnership, bid up to $3,000 an acre — matching a record in Utah — for one small drilling parcel near a major new oil field in central Utah.

The 240-acre parcel is six miles from a well pad where Wolverine Gas & Oil Corp., based in Grand Rapids, Mich., is pumping about 4,800 barrels a month of crude oil from the ground.

"Hey, there's a possibility on everything," Wixom, who manages International Petroleum, a Salt Lake City family concern with backing from outside investors, told other bidders who gathered around him during a lunch break in the auction.

In all, Wixom amassed a dozen parcels totaling 15,884 acres. He was among 77 speculators, brokers, drillers and midsize oil companies snapping up 262 of the 295 parcels offered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Altogether, the bidders competed for 437,849.5 acres, the largest such sale the BLM has held in Utah.

More than $54 million was bid for the right to develop the parcels, including administrative costs. It was a record for a BLM lease sale in Utah.

Of the total, half goes to the state, which then allocates some money to counties, said Christine Tincher, a BLM spokeswoman in Salt Lake City.

"It was a very successful lease sale today," she told the Deseret Morning News. Nearly 90 percent of the acres offered received bids. The highest bid per acre was $3,000 an acre, submitted by International Petroleum, she added.

The highest bid for a parcel was more than $3.7 million for a parcel in Carbon County, submitted by Land Group, a Salt Lake City company, she said.

Among drilling parcels were two bordering Capitol Reef National Park which, like parcels in other wild places of Utah, drew protests from conservation groups. Rafting outfitters objected to the leasing of parcels along the Green, San Rafael and San Juan rivers.

In all, opponents objected to the lease of nearly half of Tuesday's parcels. The BLM refused to pull any of them.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Walden Energy LLC snapped up a 1,600-acre parcel adjacent to Capitol Reef for just $3,200; the other parcel touching the park's edge drew no bids.

Larry David, a registered bidder for Walden Energy, refused comment on acquisition of four of 18 parcels near the national park.

"The BLM has been headstrong in their determination to offer some of our most spectacular public lands for development," said Stephen Bloch, a staff lawyer for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which is suing BLM for leasing wild places for drilling.