The oldest of the three Liberty Unit leases, OCS-Y-1585, was acquired in Beaufort Sea OCS Lease Sale 124 with an effective date of August 1, 1991. A second lease, OCS-Y-1650, was awarded in Beaufort Sea OCS Lease Sale 144 and effective October 1, 1996. On February 7, 1997, the Liberty #1 well was spudded on Lease OCS-Y-1650 and resulted in a commercially viable well test before being permanently plugged and abandoned on April 6, 1997. Leases OCS-Y-1585 and OCS-Y-1650 were approved for unitization under the Liberty Unit Agreement on June 27, 2003. A third lease, OCS-Y-1886, was awarded in Beaufort Sea OCS Lease Sale 202 with an effective date of July 1, 2007, and was approved to join the Liberty Unit on April 21, 2016.

Since the Liberty Unit's approval in 2003, the leases comprising the Liberty Unit have been granted a sequence of nine separate lease suspensions, not including two suspensions granted for the oldest Liberty lease prior to unitization. Each suspension was requested by Hilcorp Alaska, LLC, or prior lessees, and justified to BSEE's satisfaction citing various technical, permitting, and legal delays and other challenges in accordance with regulatory requirements and BSEE's discretion.

The DPP for the Liberty Unit, as previously approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in October 2018 and later overturned by ruling of the 9th Circuit Court in December 2020, includes construction of an artificial gravel island in the OCS lands of the Beaufort Sea’s Foggy Island Bay located 5.6 miles offshore from Alaska’s mainland coastline. As previously approved, the facility is projected to deliver a peak production rate of between 60,000 and 70,000 barrels of oil per day into the Trans Alaska Pipeline System with a total recovery estimate of 80-150 million barrels of oil over 15-20 years. The full volume of production sold from Liberty would have been subject to the requirements of Section 8(g) of the OCS Lands Act which shares portions of Federal revenue from OCS oil and gas production with coastal states.

The Unit Agreement and major associated decisions can be found on this page to the right.

A chronology of major leasing, environmental analysis, and plan approval milestones for the Liberty Unit can be found on BOEM’s website: Hilcorp Alaska LLC | Bureau of Ocean Energy Management