BOEM to Open Bids for Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale

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

The sale, which offers more than 21 million acres for oil and gas exploration and development offshore Texas, is open to the public and news media representatives are invited to attend.
Following the bid reading, a news media teleconference to announce the results of the sale will be conducted by BOEM Gulf of Mexico Deputy Regional Director Michael Celata. Media wishing to participate in the teleconference only should call 1-888-469-1174 by 10 a.m. CDT and provide the passcode GULF SALE.

National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) President Randall Luthi issued the following statement in advance of tomorrow’s Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas lease sale: “U.S. oil and natural gas companies remain committed to the Gulf of Mexico even as 85 percent of federal offshore waters remain closed to exploration. We look forward to tomorrow’s sale, but don’t anticipate any huge surprises in terms of number or size of bids. The Western Gulf of Mexico tends toward natural gas, which is not currently fetching high prices. Nonetheless, we do expect to see healthy interest in both shallow water and deep water tracts.”

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 nonprotected 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 81tracts for Western Sale 238. A map showing the location of tracts receiving bids will be available tomorrow at 7 a.m. CDT on the BOEM website at: http://www.boem.gov/Sale-238/.