Announcement of lease sale scheduled for spring offers 78 million acres in Gulf of Mexico
Acting Assistant Secretary for the Department of Interior’s Land and Minerals Management, Casey Hammond, and Acting Director for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Dr. Walter Cruickshank, announced a region-wide lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico for March 2020. The October 7 announcement comes soon after the August 21 lease sale where, according to BOEM, 27 companies generated “$159,386,761 in high bids for 151 tracts,” continuing the upward trend that began in 2015.
Lease Sale 254 is the sixth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. According to the Department of the Interior, the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) extends over 160 million acres and “is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas.” The fiscal terms for Lease Sale 254 will be consistent with those of the August lease sale: 12.5% royalty rate for leases in less than 200 meters of water depth and a royalty rate of 18.75% for all other leases.
Areas of the Gulf in which the lease sale will exclude are blocks subject to a 2006 congressional moratorium, adjacent or beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and within boundaries of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
PESA Member Companies provide integral services in the Gulf of Mexico, related to searching for offshore oil and gas reservoirs, exploratory and development drilling through to production. Their projects create thousands of jobs and economic activity throughout coastal communities in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
