The U.S. Minerals Management Service, expected this week to release its proposed five-year Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas leasing program for 2002 through 2007, received comments and suggestions from nine major energy companies and several industry groups.

Some of the comments could be incorporated into the final document. Among those companies offering suggestions for the leasing program, which will cover parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, were Exxon Mobil Corp., Devon Energy Corp., Chevron, Phillips Alaska, BP Amoco Vastar, Shell Corp., Texaco Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Chevron USA Production Co. Gary L. McGee, vice president of government relations for Oklahoma City-based Devon, said that his company wanted MMS to consider at a “minimum, two lease sales per year, one for all leases in the Central Gulf of Mexico Planning Area, and one for all leases in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area.” Devon also is pushing for two other sales in the Eastern Gulf, and “not just the lands included in proposed Sale 181,” the area of so much recent controversy.

Exxon Mobil’s Carlos A. Dengo, area manager for the United States and Mexico, told the MMS in a letter that it should “consider offering larger blocks in frontier areas with the goal of making high risk exploration acreage in the United States available on a size-competitive basis with acreage position offered in most other countries.” Similar to other comments, Dengo said MMS’s program should “minimize interference with the free market system, be reliable, predictable and offer quality acreage on an area-wide basis, while promoting the use of new play/geologic ideas and technology.”

The MMS solicited input last December from all stakeholders as part of its process to prepare the new OCS leasing program. The OCS Lands Act requires the Interior Department to prepare and maintain a five-year program, and this one will succeed one that runs from 1997 through June 30, 2002. The next leasing program will be the sixth prepared under the Act, which was enacted in 1978, and will establish the size, timing and location of OCS leasing.

After the proposed program is released, MMS then will conduct a 90-day waiting period, and plans to issue the final program in January 2002. Following a 60-day waiting period, the five-year program will finally be approved in March 2002.

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