U.S. Interior Department to Offer 67 Million Acres in Gulf of Mexico Oil, Gas Lease Sale

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold Gulf of Mexico oil and gas Lease Sale 261 on Sept. 27, 2023, according to a notice issued on Aug. 25. The sale will offer about 12,395 blocks on about 67 million acres on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Western, Central, and Eastern Planning Areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The agency is required to hold the lease sale by the end of September, in order to comply with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. Under the IRA, the bureau must hold an offshore oil and gas lease sale during the one-year period ending on the date of the issuance of the lease for offshore wind development and the sum total of acres offered for lease in offshore oil and gas lease sales during that one-year period must be no less than 60,000,000 acres. The IRA requires oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters as a precondition to deploy wind or solar energy.

Senator Joe Manchin, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, issued a statement in which he specifically noted that over 6 million productive acres on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf had been excluded from the lease sale based on a settlement that aimed to protect the Rice’s whale. Manchin pointed out that the exclusion of productive acres in the name of protecting Rice’s whale while conveniently only targeting oil and gas is “yet another example of this Administration’s intentional undermining of the strong energy security provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.”

The American Petroleum Institute also pointed out to the removal of about 6 million acres from the sale, saying that the administration is “adding new and unjustified restrictions on oil and gas vessels operating in this area, amounting to a lease sale in name only.”

The bureau conducted a thorough analysis, resulting in the publication of the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement earlier in Jan. 2023. This statement evaluated potential impacts on critical environmental resources and identified robust measures for mitigating these impacts, which will be taken into consideration when leasing the area. The terms of the lease sale encompass conditions that aim to minimize any potential harm to protected species and avoid conflicts with other maritime activities. The economic terms for the lease sale are formulated to incentivize diligent development and ensure equitable market value, ultimately benefiting taxpayers.