Bonus bids of over $27,000,000 were received for oil and gas leases on about 103,000 acres of' Navajo Indian land near the “four corners" area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton announced today.
The bids, which were opened November 11 at the Indian Bureau's Window Rock (Ariz.) agency office, represented the highest offering ever made for oil and gas leases on Indian lands at a single sale, Acting Bureau Commissioner W. Barton Greenwood reported.
The total bonus offered for 101,856.73 acres of tribally owned land was $26,927,642.57. For 1,079,34 acres of "allotted" or individually owned lands the aggregate bid was $548,574.38.
All lands included in the offering are in San Juan County, Utah, and San Juan and McKinley Counties, New Mexico, and are in the general vicinity of Ute Mountain Indian lands in southwestern Colorado which brought total bonus bids of $7,600,891.20 for 53,120 acres in a sale held just a month ago.
The November 1 opening is the first of' three scheduled on Navajo lands in this general area this month. The other openings are scheduled for the 13th and the 23rd.
Under the regulations which govern oil and gas leasing of Indian lands, the annual rentals are fixed at $1.25 per acre and royalties on production at 12 1/2 percent. The competition, therefore, comes in the bonuses, which are offered for the leases.
At the two major sales, which have been held on Indian lands since July 1, on the Ute and Navajo lands, the total bonus offered was over $35,000,000. This compares with the record-breaking total of approximately $41,000,000 received in bonuses, rents and royalties on all Indian lands in the United States for the 12-month period which ended June 30, 1956.
