On Wednesday the The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service will hold Lease Sale 181 covering 1.5 million acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It is the first eastern Gulf lease sale in more than a decade.

The lease sale was reduced in size earlier this year from 5.9 million acres to 1.5 million, following pressure from environmentalists, Florida congressmen and the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Florida has long opposed drilling near its coast because of concerns about the environment and its tourism revenues.

The lease sale will be held at 9 a.m., Dec. 5 in the Versailles Ballroom of the Riverside Hilton Hotel, 2 Poydras Street, New Orleans, LA. The sale area encompasses 256 blocks in the eastern Gulf Outer Continental Shelf planning area. Currently, 23 blocks in this area are under lease. Blocks in the sale are located from 100 miles offshore from the Alabama-Florida state line and over 285 miles from Tampa. Estimates of undiscovered conventionally recoverable hydrocarbons in the sale area are 1.25 Tcf of natural gas and 185 million bbl of oil.

The complete package of information related to the sale is available on the MMS website at https://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/egom/sale181.html.

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