BOEM announces Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 251

Offshore staff

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) it will offer 77.3 million acres offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida for oil and gas exploration and development. The region-wide lease sale scheduled for Aug. 15, 2018, would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lease Sale 251, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the third offshore sale under the National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022. Under this program, ten region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the US Gulf of Mexico. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.

Lease Sale 251 will include approximately 14,474 unleased blocks, located from three to 231 miles offshore, in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from nine to more than 11,115 ft (three to 3,400 m).

Excluded from the lease sale are: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006: blocks that are adjacent to or beyond the US Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap; and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundary of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

All terms and conditions for Gulf of Mexico Region-wide Sale 251 are detailed in the Proposed Notice of Sale (PNOS) information package, which will be available on Monday, April 2, 2018 at:http://www.boem.gov/Sale-251/.

03/30/2018