To date, 9,160 tracts, totaling 51.7 million ac, have been offered for lease in the Atlantic. Of the 506 tracts receiving bids, 410--totaling 2.3 million ac--were leased for a total bonus of $2.8 billion. There have been four Mid-Atlantic sales, three South Atlantic sales, and one North Atlantic sale, with one reoffering sale in the Mid-and South Atlantic.

Resource potential for proposed North Atlantic sales centers around the Georges Bank basin and the Upper Jurassic shelf edge (reef trend). Associated with the reef trend are a series of back-reef anticlines, faults, and pinch-outs. Cross sections indicate post-rift depocenters affected by block faulting and salt movement. Eight exploratory wells, all dry, and two continental offshore stratigraphic test (COST) wells have been drilled in the area.

Thirty-two exploratory wells have been drilled in the Mid-Atlantic in the Baltimore Canyon Trough. Targets have included an intrusive dome, fault blocks, deep-seated diapirs, and the Jurassic shelf-edge reef trend. Two COST wells were drilled, one encountering a show of gas. Five of the exploratory wells tested hydrocarbons, the others were dry.

The Carolina Trough appears to offer the best resource potential in the South Atlantic even though it has yet to be drilled. It has sufficient sediment thickness, a regional salt bed producing a number of diapirs on the seaward edge of the basin, and growth faults associated with the salt flow that may provide other traps.

The Blake Plateau offers some stratigraphic trap possibilities and may contain thermally mature sediments. However, no wells have been drilled in the basin. The Southeast Georgia embayment consists of a thin sedimentary section of mainly Cretaceous continental clastics and Paleozoic metasedimentary basement rocks. Six exploratory wells, all dry, and one COST well have been drilled in this basin.

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