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Minerals Management Service to offer new leases in Gulf of Mexico Sale 181, scheduled for December, will put 1.5 million OCS acres on the block for federal oil and gas leasing by The Associated Press
The Bush administration plans to sell new offshore drilling leases in an area covering about 1.5 million acres (480,000 hectares) in the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced July 2.
Norton said the lease area along the outer continental shelf at least 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the shorelines of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana has enough oil to run a million families’ cars for six years.
“Clearly, development of resources in the OCS is an important part of our national energy strategy,” she told reporters, saying the sale would take place next December. “My decision today represents a very reasonable compromise.”
The area, known as Lease Sale 181, originally covered 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) when it was proposed by the Clinton administration in 1997 after consultations with then Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles.
Opposition from Florida’s tourist industry and environmentalists delayed the sale. President George W. Bush revived the plan when he took office but met immediate opposition from his brother, Jeb Bush, who succeeded Chiles as Florida’s governor.
A senior official in the governor’s office called the new proposal encouraging, saying it narrows the lease to an area that would protect the state’s tourist-driven coastline economy. Charles Lee, senior vice president of Florida Audubon, said the proposed sale “sounds like a big improvement over what was put on the table in Lease Sale 181.
“I think most of us would prefer to prevent drilling anywhere in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but it sounds like it’s moving in the right direction, and the right direction is as far away from Florida as we can get it,” he said.
The House, with the Florida delegation leading the effort, voted in late May to block the sale as part of an appropriations bill for the Interior Department. The Senate has not acted on the legislation and it could be September before any ban could become law.
The sale area originally encompassed 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) with the tracts coming as close as 17 miles (27 kilometers) to Pensacola in Florida’s Panhandle.
One of the federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the area being offered for lease was reduced to one-fourth its original size in response to widespread opposition in Florida and from environmentalists.
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