NEW ORLEANS - The federal government says it has rejected 10 high bids from the most recent Gulf of Mexico oil lease sale as too low, while accepting 153 other high bids submitted in March.

  

The Bureau of Ocean Energy management said in a news release Tuesday that the rejected bids totaled $10.8 million, and each was below fair market value for the tract in question. Those tracts will be offered again at a sale scheduled in August.

  

Bids accepted by the agency totaled nearly $264 million.

  

The August lease sale will be the first in decades to offer every available tract in U.S. waters across the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1983, sales of tracts off Texas have been separate from those in the more popular area off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.