Outer Continental Shelf Sale #35

Problems Selecting and Evaluating Land to Lease Gao ID: EMD-77-19 March 7, 1977

A review of practices in leasing Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lands for oil and gas development concentrated on tract selection and methods for estimating revenues. The Department of the Interior has leased a total of about 12.5 million acres in 21 years through competitive offerings, with resulting revenues to the Federal Government of nearly $16 billion.

After the oil embargo, accelerated leasing led to speculation and jeopardized the Government's role in protecting the public interest. For OCS Sale #35, tracts were selected for leasing without adequately assessing their resource potential. Prelease tract evaluations were made using inadequate data. Revenues to be received were overestimated because of inadequate information and overoptimistic estimates.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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