WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Department of the Interior will offer more than 20 million acres off the Texas coast for oil and gas exploration in a lease sale.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Monday that the sale will take place in New Orleans on Nov. 28. The 20.5 million acres are located from nine to 250 miles offshore in the western Gulf of Mexico.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that the sale could result in the production of 116 to 200 million barrels of oil and 538 to 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
It will be the first offshore sale under the Obama administration's Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leasing program for 2012-2017. The program makes recoverable ocean energy resources available for exploration and development.
