The Minerals Management Service has issued a final notice for its upcoming Lease sale 185, encompassing 4,460 available blocks in the Central Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf planning area offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The sale is scheduled for March 19 at the Hyatt Regency Conference Center in New Orleans.

Mississippi Canyon Block 474, which had been excluded from lease offerings in previous years, will be up for bids next month, but with special conditions. Shell, which currently operates about 50% of deepwater GOM production, has an easement on the block and will be mooring a platform there late this year. The platform is part of Shell Offshore’s deepwater NaKika Project, which includes six subsea satellite fields located in water depths as deep as 7600 feet.

The block is offered for lease with the stipulation that all exploration, development, and production activities or operations must take place from outside the lease block by the use of directional drilling or other techniques.

The MMS also is informing potential bidders in Sale 185 of a proposed deepwater port and LNG facility. The project, if licensed, may affect oil and gas operations on related blocks, most notably Vermilion Blocks 139 and 140.

This area covered by Sale 185 is about 23.4 million acres. The blocks are located from three to about 210 miles offshore in water depths ranging from four meters to more than 3,425 meters. MMS said estimates of undiscovered economically recoverable hydrocarbons expected to be discovered and produced range from 270 to 650 million barrels of oil and 1.59 to 3.30 Tcf of natural gas.

The final notice includes a continuation of recent royalty suspension measures that are designed as incentives to increase domestic natural gas and oil production.

The MMS also said bidders should be aware of potential sand dredging activities on Ship Shoal Block 88 and South Pelto Area Blocks 12 and 19. MMS intends to coordinate activities of sand dredge vessels with oil and gas lessees so as to preclude any adverse time, space, and use conflicts.

A new feature in this sale, designed to speed up evaluation and awarding of bids, is a requirement that each bidder submit, by the bid submission deadline, a Geophysical Data and Information Statement declaring whether they possess or control depth-migrated geophysical data and information pertaining to each block upon which they are participating as a bidder. This requirement will be included in future lease sales.

MMS has issued a Notice to Lessees (NTL) No. 2003-G05, effective Feb. 15, 2003, to provide more detail concerning submission of the Geophysical Data and Information Statement, making the data available to the MMS following the lease sale, preferred format, reimbursement for costs, and confidentiality. Previously MMS had requested the information after the bids were in, a spokesperson said. Having information available with the bids should help speed up the process.

Included in this sale also are a recently revised Protected Species Stipulation and a related Information-To-Lessees clause that are designed to minimize or avoid potential adverse impacts to federally protected species.

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