BOEM Opens Bids for 21 Mln Acre Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Gulf of Mexico Regional Director John Rodi opened the Gulf of Mexico Western Planning Area Lease Sale 238 at 9:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 20, 2014 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.

As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, Lease Sale 238 is the sixth offshore sale under the Administration’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017 (Five Year Program). The first five sales in the Five Year Program offered more than 60 million acres for development and garnered more than $2.3 billion in bid revenues.

Lease Sale 238 offers all unleased and non-protected areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area, including 4,026 tracts from nine to more than 250 miles off the coast, in depths ranging from 16 to more than 10,975 feet (five to 3,346 meters). BOEM estimates the lease sale could result in the production of 116 to 200 million barrels of oil and 538 to 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

When bidding closed today, 14 companies had submitted 93 bids on 81 tracts for Western Sale 238.

Press Release, August 20, 2014