GoM lease sale coming Aug. 21

WASHINGTON – In support of President Trump’s ‘America-First Offshore Energy Strategy’, the Department of Interior’s Land and Minerals Management and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will offer a region-wide lease sale Aug. 21 of 77.8M million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration and development. The sale would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the GoM. Lease Sale 253, scheduled to be live-streamed from New Orleans, will be the fifth offshore sale under the 2017-22 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program. This lease sale will include about 14,699 unleased blocks, located from three-to-231 miles offshore in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in depths ranging from nine-to-more than 11,115 feet. Excluded areas include blocks subject to congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006; blocks adjacent to or beyond the U.S. 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. The Gulf’s OCS, covering about 160M acres, is estimated to contain about 48B barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141T cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas. Until August 2017, the DoI held separate lease sales for the Gulf's tracts off Texas. (Source: The AP 07/18/19) Terms and conditions for Sale 253 are detailed in the Proposed Notice of Sale information package. Copies of the maps can be requested from the Gulf of Mexico Region’s Public Information Unit at 1201 Elmwood Park Blvd., New Orleans, LA, 70123, or at 800-200-GULF (4853). The Notice of Availability is available for inspection in the Federal Register.