Detail from a Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Region of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) map
With tests of a new cap system currently running at BP's Deep Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, it might be a good time to take a look at some interesting maps that show which companies own oil and gas leases in the area. Michael Mechanic, Senior Editor at Mother Jones, has been writing about the ownership of Gulf oil leases and has presented two very interesting maps of the area.
The first comes from a poster in the January issue of Offshore magazine. This map (PDF) shows gas and oil pipelines and gas and oil fields in the Gulf along with the owning companies and claim boundaries.
The second is a lease map (PDF) of the area from the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Region of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE). As Mechanic notes in his follow-up post to the original Offshore map, the BOEMRE map shows that 6,652 leases, covering 35,637,392 acres, cover over 22 percent of the leaseable Gulf of Mexico.
Original post blogged on b2evolution.
