US and Mexico sign Western Gap accord

Agreed: US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon and Mexico's Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa pose after signing the United States-Mexico Agreement.

AFP/SCANPIX

By TOM DARIN LISKEY Houston

 24 February 2012 01:39 GMT

The US and Mexico signed a new transboundary agreement that will open up 1.5 million acres for future leasing in an area of the outer continental shelf known as the Western Gap.

Both nations have been in talks for over a year concerning oil and gas deposits thought to straddle the countries’ Western Gap maritime border along the Perdido fold-belt in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new agreement establishes the framework to remove “uncertainties regarding development of transboundary resources in the resource-rich Gulf of Mexico,” the US State Department said.

It was signed in Los Cabos, Mexico, where US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations ­Patricia Espinosa, and Mexican Minister of…

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