Lease Sale 169
March 18, 1998

The Outer Continental Shelf Sale 169 was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 18, 1998. This is the same area that attracted a record number of bids in Sale 157, held April 14, 1996. That record was then broken last year in Sale 166, when 103 companies submitted 1,790 bids on 1,032 tracts, for a total of $1.24 billion. The sum of winning bids at that time was $824 million.

Sale 169, just completed, resulted in 1188 bids on 794 tracts, for a total of $1.35 billion. The total sum of apparent winning bids was $810 million, on over 4.3 million acres. Many of these tracts are in deep water.

The big players, in terms of number of tracts bid on, are:

·        Shell Deepwater Development Inc. - 143 bids

·        Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast - 136 bids

·        Conoco Inc. - 127 bids

·        Chevron U.S.A. Inc. - 104 bids

·        Union Oil Company of California - 61 bids

 

In terms of total amount exposed, we have:

 

·        Marathon Oil Company - $143 million

·        Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast - $82 million

·        Union Oil Company of California - $70 million

·        Sun Operating Limited Partnership - $65 million

·        Shell Deepwater Development Inc. - $61 million

 

In terms of total amount of high bids, we have:

 

·        Marathon Oil Company - $91 million

·        Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast - $63 million

·        Sun Operating Limited Partnership - $52 million

·        Conoco Inc. - $49 million

·        Shell Deepwater Development Inc. - $47 million