On 14 December 2011 twenty companies bid for new Western Gulf of Mexico acreage in Sale 218. Winning bids on 191 blocks totaled US$337.7 million. The results of the sale were noteworthy in a number of respects.
Only a handful of companies drove the sale results. ConocoPhillips' high bids represented 46.7% of the total. Other drivers of the competition were ExxonMobil, Maersk, BP and Anadarko.
Bidding was focused in the deepwater areas consisting of Keathley Canyon, East Breaks, Alaminos Canyon, and Garden Banks. These areas captured 97.7% of the total value of all high bids. With the exception of Garden Banks, where only seven high bids were placed, bidding consisted of a combination of two key types.
The first type consisted of a very small number of high-value bids targeting specific blocks. A key example of targeted bidding was Keathley Canyon 95. This block attracted seven bids from ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, Hess, Shell, Ecopetrol, and Maersk. The winning bid, placed by ConocoPhillips, was US$103.2 million. This was 30.5% of capital committed in all high bids for the sale and 65% of ConocoPhillips' total spending on high bids. The next highest bid for this block (US$84.4 million) was placed by Chevron implying that ConocoPhillips left US$18.8 million on the table.
The second type of bidding involved a much larger number of relatively low value bids (less than US$1 million) focused on acreage accumulation or swath bidding. This latter type of bidding was particularly prevalent in East Breaks and Alaminos Canyon where high bids of less than US$1 million were placed on 63 and 65 blocks, respectively.