Oil companies who see fracking in the future of Alaska's North Slope will get a chance to bid on leases at an Oct. 26 state oil and gas lease sale.

State Department of Natural Resource officials announced the sale Thursday that will cover acreage on the North Slope, North Slope Foothills and the Beaufort Sea. The area is where a small Texas company, Great Bear Petroleum, surprised the industry by snapping up about 500,000 acres at a similar sale last October. The company paid $8 million for exploration rights to more than 90 percent of the acreage offered.

Earlier this year, Great Bear geologists schooled the Legislature about the huge potential for oil shale development on the North Slope using hydraulic fracturing techniques to tap what could be tens of billions of barrels of oil that are the original source for the giant Prudhoe Bay reservoir yet may lie still untapped and trapped in dense formations.

The lease sale is another step in the state's efforts to boost North Slope production and bolster the flow of crude through the trans-Alaska pipeline.

DNR officials said the terms of the leases will be tailored to entice companies to get out and work the prospects, rather than let the acreage sit untouched for years. Officials say they are considering similar requirements as they've put on a Cook Inlet lease sale, slated for June 22. Those include requiring work commitments, crafting rental terms to actions that are being taken and holding developers to the minimum allowable length of a lease. Unconventional plays, like fracking, might get different terms than conventional oil drilling proposals.

Gov. Sean Parnell has set a goal of 1-million-barrels a day flowing down the pipeline; currently about 600,000 barrels move through the line on a given day but that throughput is dropping as oil production declines.

Contact Patti Epler at patti(at)alaskadispatch.com.