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’s (BOEM) director, Tommy P. Beaudreaut, announced 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 (GoM) planning area.

Proposed western GoM lease sale 229, scheduled to take place in New Orleans on November 28, will be the first offshore sale under the administration’s new outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing program for 2012-17. 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.

“We are moving forward expeditiously to create jobs by implementing the president’s offshore oil and gas strategy for the next five years– a smart plan that focuses on the areas that contain the overwhelming majority of the energy resources,” said Secretary Salazar. “With comprehensive safety standards in place, this sale will help us to continue to responsibly grow America’s energy economy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”