Oil Auction News

A Biden administration auction of Gulf of Mexico drilling rights raised $382 million on Wednesday as oil companies claimed offshore acreage for what is set to be the last time until 2025.The auction total was the highest of any federal offshore oil and gas lease sale since 2015, according to a Reuters tally.Shell, Hess, Anadarko, BP, Chevron, Repsol and Equinor were among the 26 companies that participated in the sale.Anadarko had the auction's highest bid of more than $25 million for a block in the deepwater Mississippi Canyon area, according to an online broadcast of the sale by the U.S.

The Biden administration on Wednesday said it had reinstated bids from a November 2021 Gulf of Mexico sale of offshore oil and gas drilling rights, a requirement buried in U.S. President Joe Biden’s new climate change and drug pricing law.The move comes after a federal judge in January vacated the sale’s results, saying the administration had failed to properly account for the auction’s impact on global warming.The Inflation Reduction act, which President Joe Biden signed into law last month…

A federal judge invalidated the results of an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday saying the Biden administration failed to properly account for the auction's climate change impact.The decision has cast uncertainty over the future of the U.S. federal offshore drilling program, which has been a big source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its impact on the environment and contribution to global warming.The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 15% of existing U.S.

The Biden administration on Wednesday will auction oil drilling rights to 80 million acres in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico days after joining a global agreement that for the first time targeted fossil fuels as the main driver of global warming.The sale by the Department of Interior will be the first under President Joe Biden, whose administration paused drilling sales under a promise to end development on federal properties. But Biden lost a court fight to oil-producing states that…

Mexican state oil firm Pemex has reached a preliminary agreement with a consortium led by Talos Energy to evaluate whether the group's find in the Gulf of Mexico extends into a neighboring Pemex block, the companies said in a statement on Thursday.The deal, which covers territory in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, is the first of its kind for Pemex and will be in force for two years.The Talos consortium, which includes Britain's Premier Oil and Mexico's Sierra Oil & Gas, won development rights for two blocks during the first oil auction launched by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

The Chief Executive of offshore oil and gas driller Fieldwood Energy LLC, Matt McCarroll, says he is not scared of the hurricanes, geological risks and costs that keep some oil companies out of the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, he is doubling down. The private equity-backed company - already the largest operator on the U.S. outer continental shelf - announced on Thursday it is closing a $480 million acquisition of Noble Energy’s assets in the Gulf of Mexico that will add 25,000 barrels per day (bpd) to its current net production of 72,000 bpd of oil equivalent.

Chevron Corp is considering taking part in an oil auction next month in Brazil as part of a consortium of companies, Brazilian oil regulator ANP said on Tuesday on its website. The auction, slated for March 29, will offer 70 blocks in the offshore Ceará, Potiguar, Sergipe-Alagoas, Campos and Santos basins and on-shore basins of Parnaíba and Paraná. The deadline to register for the auction is Wednesday. Chevron did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chevron did not bid in an October auction that opened Brazil's offshore pre-salt play to foreign operators and was dominated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc. However, Chevron is seeking to ramp up its production in Brazil.

Contract awards for Mexico's first-ever deepwater oil auction covering 10 potentially lucrative blocks are expected to take place on December 5, oil regulator CNH said on Friday, a tender that will test investor interest given a worldwide price slump.   The 10 blocks are located in the country's territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico.   A formal vote to approve the date is expected to pass by a unanimous vote of CNH commissioners.   (Reporting by David Alire Garcia)

The Brazilian government plans to hold a new oil bidding round for areas in the subsalt polygon by 2017, the secretary of oil and gas at the Mines and Energy Ministry, Marco Antonio Almeida, said on Monday.   Almeida denied during a presentation in Rio that the current corruption scandal plaguing state oil company Petrobras was delaying the auction being held sooner.     (Reporting by Marta Nogeira; Writing by Reese Ewing; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Mexico, which has started to open its nationalized oil industry to additional private investment, will postpone auctions for deep-water oil exploration and production contracts and adjust the terms of upcoming tenders after an inaugural oil auction failed to meet the government's modest expectations. Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell told local television the government will change rules that scared off potential bidders earlier this month, when it was able to auction only two of 14 blocks in a pivotal oil and gas tender. He signaled that the government will relax its requirement that consortia bidding on oil parcels must have one member act as a guarantor and hold shareholder equity of at least $6 billion to protect the state's interest in the event of a major accident.

Mexico auctioned only two of 14 blocks in a pivotal oil and gas tender on Wednesday, falling far short of the government's modest expectations as it begins to open up the long-nationalized industry to private investment. Both the shallow water exploration and production contracts were awarded to the same consortium made up of Mexico's Sierra Oil & Gas, U.S. firm Talos Energy and Britain's Premier Oil. The other 12 blocks received no bids, or none that cleared the bar set by Mexico's finance ministry. All told, it was an inauspicious start to the rollout of President Enrique Pena Nieto's signature economic reform. In the second block up for grabs, the consortium offered 55.99 percent of pre-tax profits to the state, plus a 10 percent additional work program commitment.

Oil companies were bidding on Wednesday for 95 oil areas Colombia is offering for exploration and production in an effort to raise output from around 1 million barrels per day and increase stagnant reserves. Rights for the onshore, offshore and nonconventional or shale oil areas will be awarded to bidders who offer the largest share of production to the government or based on how much companies commit to invest in lesser-explored regions. The government said earlier this year it hoped to attract $2.6 billion in investment into the oil sector through the so-called Colombia Round 2014. Colombia's last oil auction took place in 2012. The blocks on offer total more than 22 million hectares.

Colombia's oil reserves had risen 2.9 percent to 2.445 billion barrels by the end of 2013, up from 2.38 billion barrels a year earlier, taking reserves to their highest despite a missed exploration target, the energy ministry said on Monday. Foreign investment into the Andean nation's oil and gas sector has surged in recent years and the government is preparing to tap non-conventional or shale resources offering such blocks in its 2014 oil auction which concludes in July. Though security has improved massively in the last 10 years due to increased military pressure on the leftist FARC and ELN guerrilla groups, the rebels have intensified bomb attacks on oil pipelines, with 259 attacks in 2013 alone, the oil industry association said.

Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) is reportedly withdrawing from next week's landmark auction of oil exploration and production licenses.