Judge throws out Biden administration's massive Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale [View all]
Source: Washington Post
A federal judge on Thursday invalidated the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in the nation’s history, ruling that the Biden administration violated federal law by relying on a seriously flawed analysis of the climate change impact of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The decision, by the the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, threw out 1.7 million acres of oil and gas leases that the Biden administration did not want to sell. Shortly after taking office, President Biden suspended new oil and gas drilling on lands and waters owned by the federal government. But after a Louisiana judge struck down the moratorium last summer, administration officials said they were forced to go through with the sale in November.
Environmental advocacy organizations challenged the sale, which netted nearly $192 million and ranked as the most profitable offshore auction since March 2019.
In his ruling, Judge Rudolph Contreras concluded that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had based its decision to hold the sale on a flawed environmental analysis that miscalculated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with future oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Completed under the Trump administration, the analysis found that the climate impacts would be worse if the acreage went unsold because foreign oil companies would increase their production, leading to more emissions of planet-warming gases.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/27/biden-gulf-of-mexico-lease-sale/?
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