Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that the Central Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale 208, held today in New Orleans, attracted $703,048,523 in high bids. The sale was conducted by Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) and had 70 companies submitting 476 bids on 348 tracts comprising over 1.9 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The sum of all bids received totaled $ 933,649,315.