BOEM has accepted 76 of the Sale 259 bids to date including 18 of the 29 legitimate (non-CCS) bids for shelf leases.
Interestingly, none of Exxon’s 69 high bids for shelf leases have been accepted to date. Given that the Exxon bids were for tracts that are presumably considered “nonviable” from an oil and gas production standpoint, those bids should have been accepted by now were they deemed to be valid.
Perhaps BOEM, to their credit, is planning to reject the CCS bids as they may when an unusual bidding pattern has been identified. It is now quire clear (unlike in the immediate aftermath of Sale 257) that Exxon was seeking to acquire these leases for carbon sequestration purposes. That is not allowed given that both Sales 257 and 259 were oil and gas lease sales. As similarly noted for Sale 257:
- Sale 259 was an oil and gas lease sale. The Notice of Sale said nothing about carbon sequestration and did not offer the opportunity to acquire leases for that purpose. Therefore, the public notice requirements for CCS leasing (30 CFR § 556.308) were not fulfilled.
- Because there was no draft or final Notice of Sale for CCS leases, interested parties and the public did not have the opportunity to consider and comment on CCS leasing, tract exclusions, bidding parameters, and other factors.
- 30 CFR § 556.308 requires publication of a lease form. No CCS lease form was posted or published for comment.
- CCS operations were not considered in the environmental assessments conducted prior to the sale.
- No evaluation criteria for CCS bids have been published.
Meanwhile, the decision on Green Canyon Block 777 will also be of interest, given that a higher Sale 257 bid for this block was rejected.
Finally, there was a second bid (red block below) from Focus Exploration for one of the blocks Exxon bid on (blue). Will that lower bid, which was presumably for oil and gas exploration purposes, be accepted if the Exxon bids are rejected?
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 