GULF OF MEXICO
David Paganie - Houston
OCS executive ban removed; MMS starts planning
In a move to ease pressures at the gas pump, President Bush has lifted the executive moratorium held on exploration in specific areas of the US outer continental shelf.
“One of the most important steps we can take to expand domestic oil and natural gas production is to increase access to offshore exploration in the OCS,” Bush says.
MMS estimates about 574 million acres of the US OCS are off limits, representing about 85% of OCS acreage offshore the lower 48 states. Estimated resources in the banned areas are 17.8 Bbbl of oil and 76.5 tcf of natural gas (mean estimates), according to MMS.
Bush’s withdrawal does not clear restrictions within existing marine sanctuaries, and areas near Florida are off limits until 2022 under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.
Bush’s father enacted the OCS executive withdrawal in June 1990, which expanded the moratorium imposed by Congress in 1982. In 1998, President Clinton extended Bush’s executive order until June 2012. Bush’s move this year clears the executive ban on the restricted areas in the OCS, but Congress must lift its legislative prohibition on those areas before drilling can begin. At print, Congress was in recess and had not passed legislation to clear the ban.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has directed MMS to begin developing a new five-year plan that could include OCS areas previously off limits, pending action by Congress.
“This initiative could provide a significant advantage for the incoming administration, offering options it would not otherwise have had until at least 2010,” Kempthorne says. “This action would provide a two-year head start for the next administration on developing a new five-year program.”
The development process starts with a call for information from all parties on what a new five-year program should consider.
The current program runs from 2007-2012 and includes 21 lease sales in eight of the 26 OCS planning areas in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and the Atlantic. It does not include areas under a congressional ban, with the exception of Virginia. The new program, depending on public comment, can consider any area, although any leasing in a banned area would need congressional action.
Sale 207 attracts $487.3 million in high bids
The Western GoM Oil and Gas Lease Sale 207 attracted $487,297,676 in high bids, according to MMS. Fifty-three companies submitted 423 bids on 319 tracts comprising over 1.8 million acres offshore Texas. The sum of all bids received totaled $607,134,968.
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Volume 68 Issue 9
September 2008
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