The Bureau of Land Management is postponing the oil and gas lease sale scheduled for Sept. 15, 2015 for land on the Carson City and Winnemucca Districts until Sept. 13, 2016.
In accordance with regulations, each BLM State Office is required to hold competitive oil and gas lease sales at least quarterly if lands are available for competitive leasing.
No Expressions of Interest or Pre-Sale offers for land in the Carson City or Winnemucca Districts were received prior to the Dec. 19, 2014 deadline for the 2015 sale. Interested parties will have until Dec. 18, 2015 to nominate land for the September 2016 sale.
The leasing process from the nomination of parcels to completion of the sale can take many months and begins with industry identifying parcels they would be interested in bidding on. From there the parcels are reviewed by BLM staff to ensure they are available and suitable for development or do not fall in areas where mineral development would be prohibited due the presence of endangered species, critical habitat or conflicting existing uses. Once the list of parcels is finalized, the lease sale notice is posted.
A previous sale for the same districts was postponed in 2013 when the single parcel that had been nominated was discovered to be submerged underwater for part of the year making it ineligible for leasing.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management
