NEW ORLEANS—The oil-and-gas industry took another step from the shadows of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on Wednesday when federal officials unsealed more than $330 million in winning bids for drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the first offered there since the deadly April 2010 accident.
Some 21 million acres of federal waters—an area roughly the size of South Carolina—stretching hundreds of miles off the Texas coast were up for bid. The auction attracted $337.6 million in winning bids for 191 available blocks that could eventually lead to more than 400 million of barrels of oil production.
