The Osage Nation of Oklahoma reported $643,900 in oil lease bids at a live auction on Wednesday.

Thirty-six leases were offered and all of them sold. Sixteen went for more than $20,000 each and one went for about $43,000, the director of the Osage Minerals Department said.

"It surprised me, let me tell you," Joe Hughlett told The Tulsa World.

The auction went much better than one held in March, when $142,424 in leases were sold. The tribe attributed the change to a rise in oil prices.

The royalties from the leases end up in the hands of individual Osages. But the tribe is claiming that it owns the mineral estate as part of the Cobell trust fund lawsuit.

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Bids flow at Osage oil-lease auction (The Tulsa World 6/19)