624 MOBIL OIL EXPLORATION & PRODUCING
SOUTHEAST, INC. v. UNITED STATES Stevens, J., dissenting
whether the contracts would, or would not, ultimately have produced a financial gain or led them to obtain a definite right to explore. See supra, at 608. If a lottery operator fails to deliver a purchased ticket, the purchaser can get his money back—whether or not he eventually would have won the lottery. And if one party to a contract, whether oil company or ordinary citizen, advances the other party money, principles of restitution normally require the latter, upon repudiation, to refund that money. Restatement § 373.
III
Contract law expresses no view about the wisdom of OBPA. We have examined only that statute's consistency with the promises that the earlier contracts contained. We find that the oil companies gave the United States $156 million in return for a contractual promise to follow the terms of pre-existing statutes and regulations. The new statute prevented the Government from keeping that promise. The breach "substantially impair[ed] the value of the contract[s]." Id., § 243. And therefore the Government must give the companies their money back.
For these reasons, the judgment of the Federal Circuit is reversed. We remand the cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
Since the 1953 passage of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), 43 U. S. C. § 1331 et seq., the United States Government has conducted more than a hundred lease sales of the type at stake today, and bidders have paid the United States more than $55 billion for the opportunity to develop the mineral resources made available under those leases.1 The United States, as lessor, and petitioners, as les-1 Conoco, Inc. v. United States, 35 Fed. Cl. 309, 315, n. 2 (1996); see also U. S. Dept. of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Mineral Revenues 1999, Report on Receipts From Federal and American Indian Leases 35
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