The Minerals Management Service's 5 year leasing program is now official, having survived a congressional review without challenge.
MMS has made one change to the schedule, shifting a lease sale planned for Alaska's St. George basin from 1994 to 1996 (OGJ, May 11, p. 22).
HOW TO RUN PROGRAMS
MMS Director Scott Sewell said his agency is getting "a tremendous amount of interest from foreign governments" on how to run leasing and royalty programs.
In the last few months three delegations of Russian republics, Chinese, and Hungarians have conferred with MMS on how to manage leases and maintain long term relationships with private oil companies.
Sewell said, "These things may seem simple to us, but they don't have any concept of that kind of relationship.
"We are very pleased to have the opportunity to share what we have learned about royalty collection and the competitive oil and gas leasing process."
MMS has developed a training program to help emerging democracies that are shifting to market based economies.
Sewell was part of a U.S. delegation of private and government officials that traveled in January to Tyumen in western Siberia to meet with Russian officials.
Sewell said Tyumen groups have asked for technical assistance from MMS and "we are seeking the necessary funding. We look forward to a good working relationship between our two governments."
Also interested are representatives of Russia's Krasnoyarsk region in eastern Siberia, which wants to establish a leasing program that would allow U.S. companies to bid for acreage, and the Russian Far East, which wants to develop reserves on the Russian side of the Bering and Chukchi seas.
Also regarding other governments, Sewell said MMS is closely watching Cuba's plans to develop a field south of Key West, Fla.
Cuban officials have told Offshore magazine that seismic surveys indicate a large petroleum reservoir off Matanzas province in the Straits of Florida. Operators of the block are the French firms Total and CFP.
Sewell said, "We'll be a lot more comfortable if the Cubans don't develop it themselves. And we may contact the operators of the leases and ask them to take certain of our environmental concerns into consideration."
LEASE BUYBACK
Sewell is chagrined that the House of Representatives, in its energy bill, ordered the buyback of offshore leases without appropriating money.
"Congress, if it wants a buyback, ought to provide the money to pay for it," Sewell said. "What the House has done is unconscionable."
The Office of Management and Budget has taken the position that buybacks would be subject to pay as you go provisions of the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.
And unless money is appropriated, funds would have to be taken from discretionary U.S. spending programs.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
