BOEM sets new date for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale
Written by Nick Blenkey
Image: BOEM
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has now set a date for Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale 261. It will be held November 8, 2023.
This is the sale that a court ordered BOEM to hold as originally described in the proposed notice of sale announced back in March and not as set out in its Final Notice of Sale that covered significantly reduced acreage and also placed severe restrictions on oil and gas vessel traffic.
BOEM has now published an updated Final Notice of Sale (FNOS) that, pursuant to direction from the court, will offer approximately 13,618 blocks on 72.7 million acres on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Western, Central, and Eastern Planning Areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The court directed BOEM to include lease blocks that were previously excluded due to potential impacts to the Rice’s whale population from oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, and to remove portions of a related stipulation meant to address those potential impacts from the lease terms for any leases that may result from Lease Sale 261.
The FNOS and a map of the lease sale area are available HERE
While industry has been sharply critical of BOEM’s efforts to scale back offshore oil and gas sales, it will be extremely interesting to see what levels the bids at the sale reach.
