Minerals Management Service April 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On March 28, 2005, pursuant to 30 CFR 256.29(c) as a matter of information to the public, the MMS published in the Federal Register the Notice of Availability of the proposed Notice of Sale for OCS Sale 196 in the Western GOM. The title of that Notice correctly identified the proposed sale as an oil and gas lease sale in the Western GOM. However, in the summary of the action, the sale was incorrectly identified as a Central GOM sale. We are issuing this Notice to correct that error.

Final regulations for valuing gas produced from Indian leases, published on August 10, 1999, require MMS to determine major portion values and notify industry by publishing the values in the Federal Register. The regulations also require MMS to publish a due date for industry to pay additional royalty based on the major portion value. This notice provides the major portion values for the 12 months of 2003. The due date to pay is May 31, 2005.

The Minerals Management Service is issuing this notice to advise the public that MMS has prepared an environmental assessment (EA) for proposed Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas Lease Sale 196 in the Western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) (Lease Sale 196) scheduled for August 2005. Proposed Lease Sale 196 is the fourth Western Planning Area (WPA) lease sale scheduled in the Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program: 2002-2007 (5-Year Program, OCS EIS/EA MMS 2002- 006). The preparation of this EA is an important step in the decisionmaking process for Lease Sale 196. The proposal for Lease Sale 196 (the offering of all available unleased acreage in the WPA) and its alternatives (the proposed action excluding the unleased blocks near biologically sensitive topographic features and no action) were identified by the MMS Director in January 2002 following the Call for Information and Nominations/Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and were analyzed in the Gulf of Mexico OCS Oil and Gas Lease Sales: 2003-2007; Central Planning Area Sales 185, 190, 194, 198, and 201; Western Planning Area Sales 187, 192, 196, and 200Final Environmental Impact Statement; Volumes I and II (Multisale EIS, OCS EIS/EA MMS 2002-052). The Multisale EIS analyzed the effects of a typical WPA lease sale by presenting a set of ranges for resource estimates, projected exploration and development activities, and impact-producing factors for any of the proposed WPA lease sales. The level of activities projected for proposed Lease Sale 196 falls within these ranges. In this EA, which tiers from the Multisale EIS and incorporates that document by reference, MMS reexamined the potential environmental effects of the proposed action and its alternatives based on any new information regarding potential impacts and issues that were not available at the time the Multisale EIS was prepared. No new significant impacts were identified for proposed Lease Sale 196 that were not already assessed in the Multisale EIS. As a result, MMS determined that a supplemental EIS is not required and prepared a Finding of No New Significant Impact (FONNSI).