More than 21 million acres offshore Texas will go on the auction block to energy explorers in an August sale in New Orleans, the US government announced. The US Interior Department and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said the auction would open unleazed areas in the western Gulf of Mexico. US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the Gulf of Mexico is the “cornerstone” of the US energy portfolio. More than 35 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico went on the auction block in March. The government said that acreage could generate as much as 890 million barrels of oil and as much as 3.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The August lease sale covers 21.1 million acres off the coast of Texas. BOEM estimates that acreage could give up as much as 200 million barrels of oil and 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas.



