As part of President Obama's all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) director, Tommy P. Beaudreau, released the final details for an oil and gas lease sale that will offer more than 20 million acres offshore and will make available all unleased areas in the western Gulf of Mexico planning area.

Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 229, which will be held on Nov. 28, 2012, in New Orleans, will build on two major Gulf of Mexico lease sales in the past year.

This will be the first offshore sale under the administration's new Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing program for 2012-17, which makes available for exploration and development all of the offshore areas with the highest conventional resource potential that together include more than 75% of the nation's undiscovered, technically recoverable offshore oil and gas resources.

BOEM also recently announced that the next Central Gulf of Mexico lease sale, proposed Lease Sale 227, will take place on March 20, 2013, making 38 million acres available.