Offshore Energy Lease Sale Announced by US Administration

Obama Administration announces 20-million acre oil & gas lease sale offshore Texas

As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Tommy P. Beaudreau announce that BOEM will offer more than 20 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 Gulf of Mexico Planning Area.

Proposed Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 229, scheduled to take place in New Orleans on November 28, 2012, will be the first offshore sale under the Administration’s new Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017 (Five Year Program).

 Announced last month, the Five Year Program makes more than 75% of recoverable energy resources in our oceans available for exploration and development, consistent with President Obama’s commitment to continue to expand domestic energy production and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.


The sale will include approximately 3,800 blocks, covering roughly 20.5 million acres, located from nine to 250 miles offshore, in water depths ranging from 16 to more than 10,975 feet (5 to 3,346 meters). BOEM estimates the proposed 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.

“This lease sale will make available millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are vast untapped oil and gas resources and industry is working hard to expand oil and gas exploration and development,” said BOEM Director Beaudreau. “This sale is part of the regionally tailored approach that we are taking under the Five Year Program, which is central to the balanced, all-of-the-above strategy we need to meet the nation’s energy needs.”

The Proposed Notice of Sale information package, is available here.