Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, ConocoPhillips and Petroleo Brasileiro SA were the three highest bidders in a $115 million sale of new leases to drill for oil and natural gas in parts of the western Gulf of Mexico.

“We are demonstrating our continuing commitment to domestic energy production,” Liz Birnbaum, director of the department’s Minerals Management Service, said today in New Orleans, where the sealed bids were opened.

The Minerals Management Service said yesterday it received 189 bids from 26 companies on 162 tracts of land in the area, off the Texas coast. Bids were received on 4.7 percent of the total tracts offered.

Today’s sale was a fraction of a March 19, 2008, sale that generated $3.7 billion for the Interior Department. That day, bids were made on 615 tracts as the price of oil reached $104.48 a barrel. Today oil for September delivery was $71.77 a barrel at 1.38 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

London-based BP made $50.6 million in high bids, Houston- based ConocoPhillips $15.2 million, and Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras $10 million.

The U.S. Gulf of Mexico produced 1.2 million barrels of oil a day in 2008, about 24 percent of the nation’s total production, according to government estimates. Gulf drilling produced 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 11 percent of the U.S. total for last year.

The lease sale may produce as many as 423 million barrels of oil and 2.64 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Minerals Management Service estimates.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tina Seeley in Washington at tseeley@bloomberg.net; or Daniel Whitten in Washington at dwhitten2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 19, 2009 14:11 EDT