About the Minerals Management Service (MMS)

The Minerals Management Service (MMS), an agency of about 1,700 people in 20 cities across the United States, is America’s ocean energy manager with over 1.76 billion offshore acres of land under its jurisdiction. MMS manages the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the submerged lands seaward beyond coastal states’ waters. The two primary programs in MMS are the Minerals Revenue Management Program and the Offshore Minerals Management Program. The Directorate of Policy and Management Improvement, the Directorate of Administration and Budget, and the Offices of Public and Congressional Affairs support both programs.

MMS’s activities provide major economic and energy benefits to taxpayers, states, and the American Indian community.

MMS oversees production of about 15 percent of the natural gas and 27 percent of the oil produced in the United States. Fifty-six million American homes are heated by natural gas, and about 90 percent of the new energy plants that come online in the next decade will be powered by natural gas. In the OCS, MMS regulates the energy companies that explore for and extract oil and gas resources, and conducts ocean studies of marine mammals and spectacular coral reefs like those in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2005, MMS received authority to regulate offshore alternative energy development, and is currently in the process of developing a regulatory program under which it will administer an OCS Alternative Energy and Alternate Use Program.

MMS has three offshore management regions including the Gulf of Mexico Region in New Orleans; the Pacific Region in Camarillo, California; and the Alaska Region in Anchorage. The Gulf of Mexico is considered the Nation’s preeminent source of oil and natural gas, but producing wells are also located in the Pacific and Alaska.

MMS’s other significant core business activity is the collection and disbursement of billions of dollars in mineral revenues. The agency collects, accounts for, and disburses mineral revenues from Federal and American Indian leases. These revenues total about $176.6 billion since the agency was created in 1982. In Fiscal Year 2007, disbursements were made of approximately $11.4 billion.