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More Oil And Gas Leases Sold In The Gulf

Photo: Pixabay via Public Domain

The first offshore sale in the US Oil and Gas Leasing program for the year has concluded. It offered the largest amount of acreage in the history of the federal offshore program in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile the Trump Administration is working to expand offshore drilling into the eastern Gulf and other new areas. 

The US Department of the Interior leased 90 oil and gas tracts covering more than 508,000 acres in federal waters in the central and western Gulf of Mexico last week.

Counselor for the Secretary of Energy, Vincent DeVito, said 27 companies participated in the sale. Shell Oil had the most bids with 19, followed by Chevron with 15, then Exxon Mobile with 7.

“We received 99 bids on 90 tracts,” said DeVito. “The total of high bids is $121,143,055. And the total of all bids is $137,006,181.”  

This map shows the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas regionwide lease sale on August 16, 2017 including the active leases and the bids received.Credit U.S. Department of the Interior Edit | Remove

The Department of the Interior said in a news release that means $121 million dollars in revenue will fund things from conservation to infrastructure.

But League of Conservation Voters Deputy Legislative Director Alex Taurel said a record number of acres being leased for oil drilling is not a good sign.

“You know we really see what they’ve done as part of their effort to sell out our public lands and waters to the oil industry really at the expense of communities that depend on clean oceans and clean beaches for tourism and fishing and recreation,” said Taurel.

Currently the leases are closer to Louisiana where 11 people died and 4 million barrels of oil spilled when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in 2010, affecting even southwest Florida beaches. The part of the Gulf closest to Florida is off limits to drilling but congressional protection for the area ends in 2022. The Trump administration wants to rewrite the national offshore drilling plan to include the eastern Gulf and other areas where drilling is not currently allowed and weaken safety standards. Taurel said there’s bipartisan opposition.

Nine more sales are schedule for the central and western Gulf through 2022. The next one is in the spring of 2018.

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Amy Tardif is WGCU’s FM Station Manager and News Director. She oversees a staff of 10 full and part-time people and interns in news, production and the radio reading service. Her program Lucia's Letter on human trafficking received a coveted Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, a gold medal from the New York Festivals and 1 st place for Best Documentary from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. She was the first woman in radio to Chair RTDNA, having previously served as Chair-Elect and the Region 13 representative on its Board of Directors for which she helped write an e-book on plagiarism and fabrication. She also serves on the FPBS Board of Directors and served on the PRNDI Board of Directors from 2007 -2012. Tardif has been selected twice to serve as a managing editor for NPR's Next Generation Radio Project. She served on the Editorial Integrity for Public Media Project helping to write the section on employee's activities beyond their public media work. She was the producer and host of Gulf Coast Live Arts Editionfor 8 years and spent 14 years asWGCU’slocal host of NPR's Morning Edition. Amy spent five years as producer and managing editor ofWGCU-TV’sformer monthly environmental documentary programs In Focus on the Environmentand Earth Edition.Prior to joiningWGCUPublic Media in 1993, she was the spokesperson for the Fort Myers Police Department, spent 6 years reporting and anchoring for television stations in Fort Myers and Austin, Minnesota and reported forWUSFPublic Radio in Tampa. Amy has two sons in college and loves fencing, performing in local theater and horseback riding.
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