Sales

Pledging to make the Interior Department “a better neighbor in the new Trump administration,” Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a secretarial order (SO) on Thursday that calls for streamlining the permitting process for drilling on federal lands.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) this week awarded 153 tracts to companies that bid in March to explore for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), but 10 high bids were rejected.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which found success in its first online lease auction last month, has rescheduled four other lease sale auctions that were to be conducted in coming weeks to instead be held online in December.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Wednesday conducted its first online lease auction, selling all of its parcels but not disclosing the overall proceeds.

In an effort to modernize its oil and gas program, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it will conduct lease sales online beginning next month.

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.

Low oil and natural gas prices that have reduced development activity from the Northeast to the Southwest cut into American Electric Power Co.’s (AEP) power sales to industrials in the second quarter.

SM Energy Co. has agreed to sell two packages of noncore assets for a combined $172.5 million. They are one package of mainly waterflood assets in New Mexico and another of producing assets in North Dakota and Montana.