WorldOil

Harvesting the US Gulf of Mexico

Good to the last drop of BOE? The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is a very mature oil theater with the bulk of the acreage presently leased, Fig 1. Both the Western and Central Areas have seen leasing for decades, and many leases have been recycled repeatedly. Only a few, shown in white, have never been leased. The bulk of these lease blocks lie off the Texas coast and in the very deep waters of Walker Ridge (WR), Atwater Canyon (AT) and Lund (LU) areas. Surprisingly, there are a significant number of blocks (red) that have been previously leased at least once, but are not presently under lease. The total number of Federal OCS blocks under lease as of March 1, 2006 amounted to 8,016. Of this number 2,748 were in the Western Region and 5,268 in the Central Region. There were 3,471 unleased blocks previously leased at least once.