Investment reaches historic lows at US Gulf of Mexico Central Lease Sale 241

The US Gulf of Mexico Central Lease Sale 241 was held on 23 March 2016 and attracted 148 bids from 26 companies, with high bids totalling US$156 million. The number of participants and total spend declined for the fourth consecutive year. High bids declined by 71% from the previous Central Lease Sale. The majority of bidding occurred in Mississippi Canyon, where extensive in-place infrastructure could reduce development costs at new fields. Similar to last year, 90% of bids were uncontested, resulting in an average bid per deepwater block of just US$1.3 million. Approximately half of bids were not much higher than the minimum acceptable bid of $576,000 per block. Despite these declines, remote regions were not completely ignored, indicating that the industry still believes that frontier plays can generate positive economics.