The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will offer nearly 44 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for oil and gas exploration and development in a sale that will include all available unleased areas in the Central Gulf of Mexico (GoM) Planning Area, according to a news release.

Proposed Central GoM Lease Sale 235, scheduled to take place in New Orleans in March 2015, will be the seventh offshore sale under the administration’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017 (Five Year Program). This sale builds on the first six sales in the current five-year program, which have offered more than 60 million acres and netted $2.4 billion for American taxpayers, the release said.

Sale 235 will include approximately 7,477 blocks, covering 43.5 million acres, located from three to 230 nautical miles offshore, in water depths ranging from 3 m (9 ft) to more than 3,400 m (11,000 ft). BOEM plans to offer blocks located, or partially located, within the three statute mile U.S.-Mexico Boundary Area subject to the terms of the U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement. BOEM estimates the proposed lease sale could result in the production of 460 MMbbl to 894 MMbbl of oil and 1.9 Tcf to 3.9 Tcf of natural gas, the release said.

The sale’s fiscal terms will continue to ensure a fair return to taxpayers, and include conditions to encourage diligent development as well as ensure an appropriate balance of orderly resource development with protection of the human, marine and coastal environments, BOEM said in the release.

All proposed terms and conditions for Central Sale 235 are detailed in the Proposed Notice of Sale information package, which is available at: http://www.boem.gov/Sale-235/.

The Notice of Availability of the Proposed Notice of Sale is available today for inspection in the Federal Register at: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/public-inspection/index.html.