The federal government has scrapped plans to auction offshore oil and gas drilling rights along the southeastern U.S. coast, instead focusing on selling new leases in the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico. The Obama administration had proposed opening as many as 104 million acres off the coasts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to petroleum exploration. Some estimates place the amount of recoverable oil far above 3 billion barrels, with 31.3 trillion cu ft of natural gas.