The first Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale of the second Trump administration generated close to $21 million more in winning bids than previously announced by the Interior Department.
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held a lease sale Wednesday for over 80 million acres of U.S. outer continental shelf territory in the Gulf, which President Donald Trump previously renamed the Gulf of America.
BOEM tabulated the results that afternoon but later updated them. The winning bids totaled over $300.4 million, higher than the originally announced $279.4 million. The winners scooped up 181 blocks in federal waters. In total, 219 bids were submitted by 30 companies.
During the last Gulf lease sale, in December 2023, winning bids from oil companies totaled more than $382 million, or close to $82 million more than last week’s revised tally. Other than the December 2023 sale, the total from last week’s winning bids was more than any other Gulf lease sale since 2015, according to data from BOEM.
