DOE to Offer 77.3 Million Acres for Oil and Gas Exploration in Gulf of Mexico
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The US Department of Interior is planning to offer 77.3 million acres offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida in lease sale for oil and gas exploration and development.
Said to be the largest in US history, the region-wide lease sale is scheduled to take place on 21 March 2018 and will include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
US Interior Department Deputy Secretary Bernhardt said: “Responsibly developing our offshore energy resources is a major pillar of President Trump’s American Energy Dominance strategy.
“A strong offshore energy program supports tens of thousands good paying jobs and provides the affordable and reliable energy we need to heat homes, fuel our cars, and power our economy.
“We look forward to this important sale and continuing to raise energy revenues, which fund efforts to help safeguard our natural areas, water resources and cultural heritage, and to provide recreation opportunities to all Americans.”
The proposed Lease Sale 250 will be the second offshore sale under the US Administration’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022.
The latest sale will comprise about 14,776 unleased blocks located in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from 9ft to more than 11,115ft.
However, the sale excludes the blocks subject to the Congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 as well as the blocks located adjacent to or beyond the US Exclusive Economic Zone.
The lease sale also excludes the whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundary of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, the department said.
According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) estimates, the OCS holds about 90 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.
Additionally, the Gulf of Mexico OCS is estimated to have technically recoverable resources of over 48 billion barrels of oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of gas.
In 2017, US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke had announced that the Department of the Interior would offer 75.9 million acres for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
Source: Energy Business Review
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