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December 28, 2025
December 28, 2025
December 27, 2025
Woodside Energy and Chevron were the top winners on Wednesday at the US government’s first sale of oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico since 2023.
The auction, which ended with US$279.4 million in high bids, was the first of 30 mandated by US President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill, which he signed into law in July.
The sale generated about $100 million less in high bids than the last Gulf lease sale in 2023, but oil companies bid more per acre than at any government auction in the region since 2017, according to a Reuters analysis of the results.
The Trump administration’s plans for regular offshore leasing are a significant departure from those of former President Joe Biden, whose administration had planned a historically small number of oil and gas auctions as part of an effort to shift away from fossil fuels and address climate change.
Administration officials attributed the drop in bidding compared to the last sale, held during the Biden era, to the predictable schedule now being implemented by the Interior Department.
“They are not pressed to come in all at once,” Laura Robbins, acting director of the Gulf region for the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), said at an online press conference. “We feel like this was a very successful sale.”
BOEM said 30 companies submitted 219 bids on 1.02 million acres, about 1.3 per cent of the acreage offered. Only 30 blocks received more than one bid.
BP was the high bidder on 50 tracts, according to sale documents, followed by Chevron with 22, Murphy Exploration & Production with 14, and Shell and Repsol with 12 each.
The companies with the largest high bid totals were BP with US$61 million, Australia’s Woodside with US$38 million, Chevron with US$33 million and Murphy Exploration & Production with US$27.4 million, according to BOEM.
“As today’s bidding makes clear, bp will continue to invest in the deepwater Gulf of America, underscoring our commitment to expanding US energy production and delivering on bp’s strategy to safely and profitably grow its global oil and natural gas business,” the company said in a statement.
Other winners included Beacon Offshore Energy, Talos Energy, LLOG Exploration Offshore, Woodside Energy, Anadarko and Equinor.
Shell said it was the apparent high bidder on 12 blocks totalling about $16.2 million. “This outcome reflects our continued commitment to responsibly developing the Gulf of America’s world-class resources that are essential to meeting today’s energy needs while building a lower-carbon future,” Shell spokesperson Cynthia Babski said in an emailed statement.
BOEM, an arm of the Interior Department, offered 81.2 million acres in the Gulf at a royalty rate of 12.5 per cent, the lowest permitted under Trump’s new tax law. Previously, oil companies were required to pay a minimum of 16.66 per cent in royalties. The law lowered the rate to encourage industry participation.
Offshore production accounts for about 15 per cent of US output but has lagged onshore shale fields in recent years because of longer timelines and higher upfront costs.
The last Gulf sale in 2023 raised US$382 million, the highest of any federal offshore lease sale since 2015. (Reuters)
