Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Abigail Ross Hopper announced in a March 2 statement that the bureau will offer more than 21 million acres offshore Texas for oil and gas exploration and development. The lease sale will include all available unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico (GoM) planning area.

Proposed Western GoM Lease Sale 246 is scheduled to take place in New Orleans, La., in August 2015 and will be the eighth offshore sale under the Obama administration’s outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing program for 2012 to 2017. This sale builds on six sales already held during the current five year program that have netted nearly $2.4 billion. The seventh GoM sale, Central Planning Area Sale 235, will be held on March 18.

Sale 246 will include about 4,000 blocks, covering roughly 21.8 million acres, located from nine to 250 miles offshore, in water depths ranging from 16 to more than 10,975 feet (5 to 3,346 meters). BOEM estimates the proposed lease sale could lead to production of 116 million to 200 million barrels of oil and 538 billion to 938 billion cubic feet of gas.

The proposed terms of the sale include conditions to ensure orderly resource development and protection of the human, marine and coastal environments, including stipulations to protect biologically sensitive resources, mitigate potential adverse effects on protected species and avoid potential conflicts associated with oil and gas development in the region. BOEM’s proposed economic terms include the same range of incentives to encourage development and ensure a fair return to taxpayers as used in previous sales.

Offshore