The Minerals Management Service (MMS) Friday announced the availability of the Final Notice of Lease Sale 197, an offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, scheduled for March 16, 2005. This lease sale is the third Eastern GOM Outer Continental Shelf lease offering in the last five years. The configuration is the same as MMS Eastern GOM Lease Sales 181 and 189, held in December 2001 and December 2003, respectively. The lease sale area encompasses the unleased blocks in an area of the Eastern GOM OCS Planning Area. The area is directly south of Alabama. These 124 unleased blocks cover about 714,240 acres and are located from 100 to 196 miles offshore in water depths of 1,600 to more than 3,425 meters. Estimates of undiscovered economically recoverable hydrocarbons in this proposal range from 65 to 85 million barrels of oil and 0.265 to 0.34 Tcf of natural gas. The Final Notice of Lease Sale 197 will be posted on the MMS website at https://www.gomr.mms.gov.

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