The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans to offer 78 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico in a region-wide oil and gas lease sale, Deputy US Interior Sec. David Barnhart and BOEM Acting Director Walter D. Cruickshank jointly announced. The sale will include all available unleased areas there, they said on Sept. 25.
OCS Sale No. 252, which will be streamed live from New Orleans, will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-22 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. Under the program, 10 region-wide sales are scheduled for the gulf, where resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas systems are well established. Two gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined western, central, and eastern planning areas.
The portion of the gulf, covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion bbl of undiscovered technically recoverable crude oil and 141 tcf of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas, BOEM said.
Sale No. 252 will include 14,696 unleased blocks, 3-231 miles offshore and in 9-11,115 ft of water.
Excluded from the sale are blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, blocks adjacent to or beyond the US Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap, and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
All terms and conditions for Sale No. 252 are detailed in the Proposed Notice of Sale information package, which will be available on Sept. 26 at www.boem.gov/Sale-252/.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.
