BOEM yields over $18 million in final Western Gulf energy-lease auction

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) recently said $18,067,020 was yielded from high bids for 24 tracts in the auction of oil and gas Lease Sale 248, which covers 138,240 acres in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area.
 
“The Gulf of Mexico continues to be one of the most productive basins in the world and is an important part of our nation’s domestic energy portfolio,” BOEM Director Abigail Ross Hopper said. “Though this sale reflects today’s market conditions and industry’s current development strategy, the bidding confirms that there is continued interest in the deepwater areas of the Gulf."
 
The auction was the 11th for Gulf of Mexico offshore tracts under the administration’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017 and completed the auction process for the Western Planning Area. The previous sales for the current Five Year Program have seen BOEM generate $3 billion through the leasing of more than 60 million acres.
 
BOEM anticipates that discovery and production efforts from the leased tracts from Sale 248 will yield 116 million to 200 million barrels of oil and 538 billion to 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The nearly 140,000 acres encompass approximately 4,399 blocks and are located between 9 and 250 nautical miles offshore. Water depths on these blocks range from 16 feet to nearly 11,000 feet.