Rejecting Destruction to Communities, Groups Sue Biden Admin Over Offshore Lease Sale

Calling the Biden administration's plan to go ahead with an offshore drilling lease sale "mind-boggling" as the United States faces escalating climate harms including "record heat, fires, and flooding," several advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the U.S. Interior Department's impending sale of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the fossil fuel industry.

Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth (FOE) filed the lawsuit saying that in moving forward with Lease Sale 261—the last of three offshore lease sales mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act—the Interior Department did not sufficiently consider the environmental impacts on people and wildlife across Gulf communities.

"As steward of the country's public lands and waters, Interior has a duty to fully consider the harms offshore leasing can cause, from air pollution to oil spills, and beyond," said Julia Forgie, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs. "This vast lease sale—for millions of acres—poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well. We are holding the agency to its obligation to carefully assess these risks and the climate fallout of this giveaway to Big Oil."

"If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop."

A study published in May in Environmental Research showed that people living near offshore drilling rigs are at heightened risk for respiratory and cardiovascular issues as well as other serious illnesses, along with facing the rising threat of extreme weather due to fossil fuel emissions from such projects.

Lease Sale 261 could result in the production of more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of fossil gas over the next 50 years, noted the groups, leading to more than 370 tons of greenhouse gases at a time when scientists and energy experts are warning that continued fossil fuel extraction is threatening the planet.

The sale is scheduled to be held on September 27, around the same time that the Interior Department is expected to release its proposal for a five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program.

That proposal could include as many as 11 new offshore lease sales "with the potential to emit up to 3.5 billion tons of carbon pollution," said the groups.

The lawsuit filed on Friday accused the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) of presenting "an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents" in its analysis of environmental impacts that could be caused by Lease Sale 261.

"The final SEIS [supplemental environmental impact statement] failed to take the required 'hard look' at the significant impacts of this action," reads the lawsuit. "For example, the bureau did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that these massive lease sales will result in only slightly higher emissions than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments. With regard to environmental justice, the final SEIS arbitrarily dismissed the impacts of onshore oil and gas infrastructure—refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industrial sources that process fossil fuels and related products from these lease sales—on Gulf communities."

The lawsuit was filed as thousands of people in Louisiana's so-called "Cancer Alley" were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical leak and fire at a petroleum refinery.

Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said the group will "keep fighting until the Gulf of Mexico is off the table for good."

"Unfortunately, given BOEM's history of sacrificing the Gulf of Mexico to Big Oil, this lease sale decision comes as no surprise," said Templeton. "Our lawsuit should also come as no surprise, since BOEM continues to rely on the same outdated, broken environmental analysis. If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop."