Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Acting Director Walter Cruickshank today announced that the bureau will offer more than 21 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration and development in a lease sale that will include all available unleased areas in the Western Planning Area in the Gulf of Mexico.
Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 238 will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 20 August 2014, the sixth offshore sale under the Administration’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017. This sale builds on the first five sales in the current Five Year Program, which have offered more than 60 million acres and netted nearly $2.3 billion for American taxpayers.
Sale 238 will include 4026 blocks, covering roughly 21.6 million acres, located from 9 to 250 miles offshore, in water depths ranging from 16ft to more than 10,975ft (5m to 3346m).
BOEM estimates the proposed lease sale could result in the production of 116MMbo to 200MMbo and 538Bcf to 938Bcf of natural gas.
For the first time, BOEM will offer blocks located, or partially located, within the three statute mile US-Mexico Boundary Area, as well as blocks within the former Western Gap that lie within 1.4nm north of the Continental Shelf Boundary (1.4nm buffer) between the US and Mexico, subject to the terms of the US-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement.
Related news:
ExxonMobil awarded Western Gap blocks, 30 May 2014
GOM lease sale to include areas within Transboundary, 15 April 2014
US enacts Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement, 27 December 2013
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