The Trump administration’s fourth major auction for oil and gas leases in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico received $244 million in high bids on Wednesday, reflecting an uptick in interest from drillers attracted to the region’s low prices. Of the 78.5 million acres (31.77 million hectares) offered, companies submitted bids on 1.26 million acres, or about 1.6 percent of the total, an increase from two sales last year when about 1 percent of acreage offered received bids. “We’re on a positive slope,” Mike Celata, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s regional director for the Gulf of Mexico, said on a conference call with reporters. Despite the higher revenue and acreage, the price per […]