The US Department of the Interior (US DOI) has announced that it would offer all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico under the proposed Lease Sale 249, scheduled for 16 August 2017. This sale is part of the new administration's plans to make the United States energy independent.
The Lease Sale 249 will be the first offshore sale under the new Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022 (Five Year Program). Under this new programme, ten region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the Gulf, where the resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas infrastructure is well established. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.
Lease Sale 249 will include about 13,725 unleased blocks covering about 73 million acres (over 295,000 km²). The estimated amount of resources projected to be developed as a result of the proposed region-wide lease sale ranges from 211 mbl to 1.118 Gbl of oil and from 547 bcf to 4.424 tcf (15 - 125 bcm) of gas. The sale could potentially result in 1.2 to 4.2% of the forecasted cumulative Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico OCS, covering about 160 million acres, has technically recoverable resources of 48.46 Gbl of oil and 141.76 tcf (4,000 bcm) of gas.