Unalaska, AK – The last of the active North Aleutian basin natural leases have been dropped. Hewitt Mineral Corporation let go its four leases in October, two years after Shell relinquished the 33 leases it possessed.

Hewitt's leases covered over 22,000 acres on the Alaska Peninsula. The company had hoped to develop a liquefied natural gas plant on the peninsula as well as a pipeline. But a number of challenges have caused Hewitt to release its stake, says company president William Dolman.

"Shell released theirs a couple of years ago, and we wanted to stay with it and see if there was any interest outside of Shell that could also join us,

And we did our due diligence as far as interest on the Peninsula and got into negotiations with a few companies, but it never panned out."

Cost combined with a particularly cautious climate in the wake of the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico made it difficult to keep the leases. Dolman says that costs to develop the necessary infrastructure to both extract and transport the natural gas posed a problem for the company. He also adds that the company was paying over $3 per acre, and the leases where becoming more expensive each year. After a certain point, maintaining the leases did not make sense for the company.

Still, Dolman says that Hewitt would like to continue exploring the possibility of setting up operations in Alaska.

"I think the play is a very good play, and we'd like to come back," says Dolman. "But we're also looking at some other areas for the future."

While it's possible that other companies might try to acquire leases on the Alaska Peninsula, it's not very likely in the near future, says Allen Dennis, an asset manager at the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas.

"There are some oil seeps there," says Dennis. "But it's going to take someone new to come in with a new idea about where the hydrocarbons might be and how they might be trapped."

No companies have bid on the Alaska Peninsula leases since 2007.