The United States Department of the Interior (DoI) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have unveiled the results of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oil and gas Lease Sale 250: 33 companies submitted US$139m in bids: among the largest bidders, Chevron's bids (24) totalled US$29m, followed by Shell (16 bids for US$23m), BP (27 bids for US$20m) and Total (9 bids for US$15m).
This was the second offshore hydrocarbon sale held under the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program) for 2017-2022. Under this programme, 10 region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the GoM under the framework of the National OCS Program 2017-2022. In total, 14,474 unleased blocks located in the GoM's western, central and eastern planning areas were included in the Lease Sale 250. The last sale, namely the Lease Sale 249 (August 2017), received US$121m in high bids.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) estimates that the US nationwide OCS holds around 90 Gbl of undiscovered recoverable oil and 327 tcf (9,259 bcm) of undiscovered recoverable gas reserves, of which over 48 Gbl of oil and 141 tcf (3,992 bcm) for the Gulf of Mexico OCS only.