Rigzone speaks to the Department of the Interior, the National Ocean Industries Association, the Energy Workforce and Technology Council and Fitch Solutions. According to the Department of the Interior (DOI), of the more than 11 million acres of offshore federal waters already under lease in the U.S., 75.58 percent, or 8.29 million acres, are non-producing. When asked why this is the case, National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito told Rigzone that it takes time and capital to develop an offshore oil and gas lease and said there is no guarantee that a lease block has commercially viable amounts of hydrocarbons. “Finding oil and gas is a prospective business and companies need to cast a wide net of lease blocks to identify and develop commercially viable discoveries. Non-producing leases are not ‘idle’. Just because there is no surface activity occurring at a lease block does not mean it is […]