The largest lease sale in American history in the offshore Gulf of Mexico yielded $124.76 million dollars in winning bids on Wednesday, a modest response to the Trump administration’s effort to pump up investment in the region. The Interior Department had offered up more than 77 million acres (31.2 million hectares), an area twice the size of Florida, as part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to ramp up U.S. fossil fuels output. Companies bid on just 1 percent of that acreage, and won those tracts with bids averaging $153 an acre – 35 percent below average winning bids at a similar auction last year, and a fraction of the level […]