U.S. Department of the Interior
Minerals Management Service
Office of Communications

NEWS RELEASE

FINAL NOTICE OF SALE FOR
WESTERN GULF OF MEXICO OCS SALE 171

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) has published a Final Notice of Sale for Sale 171 in the Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in today's Federal Register. The sale will be held August 26, 1998, 9:00 a.m., Hyatt Regency Hotel, 500 Poydras Street, Cabildo Ballrooms A, B, and C, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Sale 171 encompasses about 20.64 million acres offshore Texas and deepwater Louisiana, and includes 3,778 available blocks in the Western GOM Outer Continental Shelf Planning Area.

The blocks are located from 9 to 200 miles offshore in water depths ranging from 8 meters to more than 3,000 meters. There are 2,329 blocks in water depths of 200 meters or more.

This is the third sale in the Western Gulf of Mexico, and the sixth sale overall, in which tracts receiving bids in water depths of 200 meters or more are eligible for consideration under provisions of the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act.

Areas within the boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary have been excluded from this sale pursuant to President Clinton's June 12, 1998, announcement which bans leasing in existing national marine sanctuaries.

Tracts beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the Northern Portion of the Western Gap are also excluded from this lease sale.

The Final Notice of Sale will be posted on the MMS Website at http://www.mms.gov. In addition, copies of the document are available from MMS's Gulf of Mexico Regional Office, Public Information Unit, 1201 Elmwood Park Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana 70123 (504) 736-2519; toll free (1-800-200-GULF).

The MMS is the federal agency that manages and regulates the Nation's natural gas, oil, and other mineral resources on the OCS, and collects, accounts for, and last year disbursed about $6 billion in revenues from offshore federal mineral leases and from onshore mineral leases on federal and Indian lands.

-MMS-

MMS Internet website address: http://www.mms.gov
24 hour Fax-on-Demand Service:(202) 219-1703