The U.S. Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will on Wednesday hold a lease sale offering 48 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama for oil and gas exploration and development.
BOEM said that Lease Sale 247 , which includes all unleased and non-protected areas in the Central Gulf of Mexico Planning Area, will be livestreamed to the public starting at 9:00 AM North American Central Daylight time (3:00 PM Central European Time).
The aim of the live online broadcast is for the bid information to reach a much broader audience and eliminates the need for the public to physically attend the bid reading. BOEM’s Gulf of Mexico Regional Director Michael Celata will announce the results of the sale and answer questions afterwards.
Lease Sale 247, the twelfth offshore sale under the Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for the 2012-2017 (Five Year Program), includes 9,118 tracts located from three to 230 miles offshore, in water depths ranging from nine to more than 11,115 feet (three to 3,400 meters).
The first eleven sales in the Five Year Program offered nearly 73 million acres for development and garnered more than $3 billion in bid revenues.
BOEM added that, after the bidding was closed, 24 companies submitted 189 bids on 163 tracts for the sale.
According to the Bureau’s estimates, the lease sale could result in the production of 460 to 890 million barrels of oil, and 1.9 trillion cubic feet to 3.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. BOEM’s economic terms and conditions are the same as previous sales and include a range of incentives to encourage diligent development and ensure a fair return to taxpayers.
To remind, the first ever livestream sale, Lease Sale 248, which offered all unleased and non-protected areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area, happened back in August 2016 .
You can follow the livestream for the Lease Sale 247 below: