Lease

Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Lease Sale 248, which offered 23.8 million acres offshore Texas for oil and natural gas exploration and development, attracted only a handful of bids Wednesday, and — unlike several other recent lease sales — no interruptions by protesters, thanks to a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) decision to broadcast the event live on the internet.

Two Gulf of Mexico lease sales, tentatively scheduled for 2018, are undergoing more scrutiny with four public scoping meetings in September, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said.

Lawyers for the Western Energy Alliance (WEA) filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has failed to meet federal obligations to hold quarterly lease sales and conduct them in a transparent manner.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in Colorado on Monday released plans to potentially offer in May 2017 up to 100,000 acres for oil and natural gas exploration spread over five counties in the northwestern corner of the state.

Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Lease Sale 248, which will offer 23.8 million acres offshore Texas for oil and natural gas exploration and development, will be held Aug. 24 in New Orleans, and will be the first federal offshore oil and gas auction broadcast live on the internet, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

The New Mexico office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it has postponed an oil and gas lease sale of Permian Basin property scheduled for Wednesday until early September on the grounds that it wants to provide adequate public notice of the sale.

The Obama administration said that while it supports the overall goals outlined in a bill that would allow the Department of Interior (DOI) to conduct offshore oil and natural gas lease sales via the internet, it doesn’t think a new system can be in place within a stipulated one-year timeframe.

One day after the chairman of FERC was forced from a stage at an energy meeting in New York, another contingent of “keep it in the ground” anti-fossil fuel development protesters took aim at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease sale in Colorado on Thursday.

One day after the chairman of FERC was forced from a stage at an energy meeting in New York, another contingent of “keep it in the ground” anti-fossil fuel development protesters took aim at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease sale in Colorado on Thursday.