The Obama administration would be forced to sell offshore drilling leases off the coast of Virginia under a bill introduced in the House on Friday.  More »

President Barack Obama’s new Interior Secretary nominee hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate yet — much less sworn in — but she’s already facing pressure to expand offshore drilling.  More »

The Obama administration ignored the wishes of coastal leaders when assembling a plan for offshore drilling near their shores, says a group of Republican governors from Texas, Louisiana and other states.  More »

The House of Representatives today rejected an Obama administration plan for selling offshore drilling leases over the next five years and instead voted to replace it with a more aggressive GOP alternative.  More »

Oil and gas companies will have a chance to bid on drilling rights in the western Gulf of Mexico in a lease sale scheduled for Nov. 28. The auction of offshore drilling leases, which had been planned but not formally scheduled until today, is the first that will be conducted under the Obama administration’s new five-year plan governing offshore lease sales until June 30, 2017.  More »

The Interior Department on Wednesday held a record-setting sale of oil and gas drilling rights in the central Gulf of Mexico, with companies submitting $1.7 billion in winning bids for 454 offshore tracts and Statoil establishing a new high-water mark with its $157 million offering for a single lease.  More »

Federal officials will unseal nearly 600 secret bids for offshore oil and gas leases on Wednesday, during the first auction of drilling rights in the central Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Pent-up demand for the acreage, big discoveries in the region recently and high oil prices earlier this year are all expected to contribute to a robust sale.  More »

A leading House Republican today insisted the Obama administration was on track to blow a July 1 deadline to finish a plan for selling offshore drilling leases over the next five years. But administration officials said the five-year schedule of drilling leases would be issued by July 1, with a first auction scheduled this year.  More »

House Republican leaders today unveiled a plan to expand oil and gas drilling in the nation’s lands and waters — and use the royalties from those projects to pay for better bridges and new roads.  More »

Oil industry leaders and their Capitol Hill allies complained Tuesday that the Obama administration’s plan to hike the minimum bid for offshore drilling leases and shorten the duration of those contracts will discourage companies from making bets on marginal fields in the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately curb domestic energy production.  More »

The Obama administration today unveiled a plan for selling offshore drilling leases over the next five years that focuses on exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, proposes three auctions in the Arctic and rules out development in unexplored areas along the Atlantic coast.  More »

The Obama administration is set today to unveil a plan for selling offshore drilling leases over the next five years that focuses on exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.  More »