US puts Italy-sized chunk of Gulf of Mexico up for auction for oil drilling

A total of 313 tracts of ocean, spanning 1.6m acres, received high bids during the auction, the administration announced on Wednesday afternoon. There were 32 fossil fuel companies involved in the auction, collectively bidding $309.7m for drilling rights. The amount offered by the federal government was much larger than this, however. The bids will be evaluated by the government in the coming months before leases are issued.

In all, 73.3m acres (30m hectares), an area roughly the size of Italy, was made available to drilling companies, less than a month before the 13th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. The sale, known as lease 259, had the potential to extract more than 1bn barrels of oil and 4.4tn cubic feet of gas over the next 50 years, according to the US federal government.

Climate campaigners mostly considered the trade-off to be worthwhile as the resulting emissions cuts should still be large, but the new glut of drilling could wipe out much of the benefits of wind and solar projects over the next decade.

The administration has also indicated that the terms of the Inflation Reduction Act also compel the Gulf of Mexico sales, although opponents argue that such a large area did not need to be put up for sale.