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OCS Lease Blocks that are currently leased from the federal government by industry for the purpose of development of traditional oil or gas energy products and may or may not be actively developed or producing. Leases in state waters are not included in this layer.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) (43 U.S.C. 1331-1356a), as amended, authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to issue, on a competitive basis, leases for oil and gas, and sulfur, in submerged lands of the Outer Continental Shelf. The Act authorizes the Secretary to grant rights-of-way and easements through the submerged lands of the OCS.
An OCS lease is an agreement that is issued under section 8 or maintained under section 6 of the Act and that authorizes exploration for, and development and production of, minerals on the OCS. The term also means the area covered by that agreement, whichever the context requires. The areas covered by the lease agreement consist of one or more OCS Lease Blocks, or any leasable portion thereof, bid upon as a single administrative unit, that will be part of a single lease.
This data set contains the outlines for active federal oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region. The file is updated on a monthy basis on or about the first of each month. The lease outlines represent a close approximation, but might not be the exact coordinates for those leases. For official coordinates please refer to the OPD or SOBD for the lease. All leasing in the GOM OCS Region is captured on a NAD27.
This file is based on the Geospatial Services Division's Official Protraction Diagram (OPD) and Leasing Maps (LM). Each offshore area is defined by an API Number corresponding to those in the API Bulletin Number D12A. OPDs are numbered using the United Nations International Map of the World Numbering System, and are generally named for land or hydrographic features contained within the limits of the diagram. OPDs and LMs are mapping products produced and used by the BOEM to delimit areas available for potential offshore mineral leases, determine the State/Federal offshore boundaries, and determine the limits of revenue sharing and other boundaries to be considered for leasing offshore waters. This dataset shows only the outline of the maps that are available from BOEM.Only the most recently published paper or pdf versions of the OPDs or LMs should be used for official or legal purposes. The pdf maps can be found by going to the following link and selecting the appropriate region of interest: https://www.boem.gov/Official-Protraction-Diagrams/
Both OPDs and LMs are further subdivided into individual Outer Continental Shelf(OCS) blocks which are available as a separate layer. Some OCS blocks that also contain other boundary information are known as Supplemental Official Block Diagrams (SOBDs.)
Further information on the historic development of OPD's can be found in OCS Report BOEM 99-0006: Boundary Development on the Outer Continental Shelf:
https://www.boem.gov/BOEM-Newsroom/Library/Publications/1999/99-0006-pdf.aspx
Because GIS projection and topology functions can change or generalize coordinates, these GIS files are considered to be approximate and are NOT an OFFICIAL record for the exact block coordinates or areas. The Official Protraction Diagrams (OPDs) and Leasing Maps (LMs) and Supplemental Official Block Diagrams (SOBDs) serve as the legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates.
This file is based on the BOEM - Geospatial Services Division’s Official Protraction Diagram (OPD) and Leasing Maps (LM). The OPDs and LMs and Supplemental Official Block Diagrams (SOBDs) serve as the legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates and area descriptions. OPDs are numbered using the United Nations International Map of the World Numbering System, and are generally named for land or hydrographic features contained within the limits of the diagram. The use of OPDs and LMs makes it easier to refer to individual blocks within a region or planning area. Leasing Maps are part of an older system still in use in the Gulf of Mexico. OPDs were built where existing oil and gas leases, at the time, had not yet occurred and where LMs had not yet been established. This data set contains Official Protraction Diagram (OPD) and Leasing Map (LM) outlines in ESRI shape file formats for the BOEM Gulf of Mexico Region. In order to produce a file containing all the OPDs in a region – Official UTM OPDs and State Plane projected LM outlines were re-projected to basic geographic NAD27 unprojected space in order to create a continuous file. Because GIS projection and topology functions can change or generalize coordinates, these GIS files are NOT an OFFICIAL record for the exact OPD or LM boundaries. Only the official projected paper OPD or LM or a digital image (pdf) of them serves as OFFICIAL records. These can be found at the following location: https://www.boem.gov/Official-Protraction-Diagrams.