The government is set today to auction offshore drilling leases in the western Gulf of Mexico — the first such sale since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is slated to open up the auction, which will get underway at 9 a.m. central time at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
Although full details of the winning bids won’t be disclosed until Lease Sale 218 is over, early details suggest there is plenty of pent-up industry demand for the offshore tracts that are up for grabs.
According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, 20 companies have placed 241 separate bids to buy 191 tracts off the coast of Texas — slightly more than the 189 bids that 27 companies submitted on 162 tracts during the last western Gulf lease sale in August 2009.
Industry leaders had warned that new lease and auction terms — including a minimum bid of $100 per acre (up from $37.50 each) for most Gulf tracts — would discourage bidding. But the stats seem to belie that argument.
The lease sale covers about 20.6 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico, with available blocks located in federal waters at least nine miles off the shoreline. Some of the available offshore tracts are shallow — just 16 feet deep — but the available acreage includes territories as deep as 10,975 feet.
Environmental groups today filed a lawsuit asking a Washington, D.C.-based federal district court to void the results of the auction.
The groups — including Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity — say the government is flouting the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster by conducting the auction without making enough changes to boost the safety of offshore drilling.
“The federal government is failing to learn from one of the most environmentally and economically destructive incidents in U.S. history,” said NRDC senior attorney David Pettit. “Fresh oil from the Macondo well continues to wash ashore nearly two years later, and the government is being negligent by issuing leases to drill now and drill deeper without ensuring all necessary precautions.”
Jacqueline Savitz, a senior campaign director for Oceana, said the lawsuit was designed to “force (the Interior Department) to protect wildlife and ultimately, the fishing, recreation and tourism industries, rather than just selling out to Big Oil.”
The government is also planning to sell offshore drilling leases in the central Gulf of Mexico early next year. Those leases — which will include areas around BP’s failed Macondo well — are generally considered more attractive than the western Gulf tracts on the auction block Wednesday.
According to the offshore energy bureau, the areas up for sale Wednesday could produce 222 million to 423 million barrels of oil and 1.49 trillion cubic feet to 2.65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Breaking News – Joining the Environmetal lawsuit asking a Federal judge to void the results of the sale, are additional noteworthy lobby groups including: ‘I Love Flies’, the Coalition for Protection of Mosquitoes, and the Advocacy Foundation for ‘Weeds are Green’. “Our public rights are being trampled on” a spokesperson for the ‘I Love Flies’ group stated, and house flies, swamp flies, and flies of all genres are being threatened by hydrocarbon use and the exploitive activities of Big Oil Companies – they must be stopped!
Looks like ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil were the most active. Anadarko left a lot on the table. That must have hurt a little bit.