Suit not expected to halt GoM offshore lease sale

Offshore staff

NEW ORLEANS – A scheduled Gulf of Mexico lease sale will proceed despite a lawsuit challenge.

A report by the Associated Press quotes a Department of Interior spokeswoman as saying the bids will be opened as scheduled, but did not comment on the suit.

The suit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenges the sale by saying the government did not weigh sufficiently the lessons learned during the Macondo incident when calculating the risks of drilling in the acreage available for lease.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) plans to auction 3,900 blocks off the Texas coast today in New Orleans. The sale covers about 20.6 million acres.

Erik Milito, upstream director at the API, said the institute is not surprised with the lawsuit because “it has become kind of routine to see litigation.”

BOEM has announced plans for its 2012-2017 offshore GoM lease sales.

12/14/2011