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bureau of ocean energy management
Biden Offshore Drilling Plan Continues 'Dangerous Cycle'
"Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis," said one campaigner.
Dec 15, 2023
The Biden administration on Friday finalized a five-year plan for offshore fossil fuel leasing that was initially released in September and sharply condemned as a "climate nightmare."
The Department of the Interior (DOI) highlighted in a statement Friday that the 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program has the fewest sales in history, with just three for the Gulf of Mexico set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029.
The DOI also stressed that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed last year by President Joe Biden "prohibits the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from issuing a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the OCS in the previous year."
"BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production."
That part of the IRA is one of the key reasons it has been criticized by climate campaigners, who continue to warn that the landmark package is far from enough to meet the U.S. goal of halving planet-heating emissions by the end of this decade.
The DOI's plan outraged the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) for not being friendly enough to the fossil fuel industry while advocates for the planet warned that it's not bold enough given the worsening climate emergency.
"Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis," Beth Lowell, Oceana's vice president for the United States, declared in a Friday statement about the finalized program. She pointed out that the process actually began under former President Donald Trump, who proposed 47 leasing sales.
"This five-year plan started with President Trump proposing to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore oil drilling and ends with President Biden's final plan that is the smallest to date," she said. "The footprint of offshore drilling was not expanded, but the dangerous cycle of drilling and spilling must end."
After the Biden administration released its proposal in September, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Irene Gutierrez wrote the following month that "BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production."
"BOEM also fails to account for the severe risks from additional oil and gas leasing to the Gulf ecosystem and species like the critically endangered Rice's whale," Gutierrez charged. "BOEM's analysis also treats catastrophic oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster as events that are speculative and unlikely to repeat again, and the program excludes such spills from its analysis."
"In our comments to the proposed program and in other advocacy, we urged BOEM to issue a program with no new lease sales. The agency has ample authority to do so," she noted. "Further, declining fossil fuel demand and existing energy reserves mean that no new offshore leasing is needed for at least the next 30 years to meet national energy needs. BOEM could have issued a zero-lease sale plan, but declined to do so, despite calls from a wide range of community and environmental groups for no new leasing in the Gulf."
The DOI plan comes near the end of what experts have said will be the hottest year on record. It also comes on the heels of United Nations climate talks that scientists called "a tragedy for the planet," given that the final deal out of COP28 called for "transitioning away from fossil fuels," but did not endorse the "phaseout" demanded by civil society and most participating countries.
Biden—who is seeking reelection next year and may face off against Trump—has previously come under fire from frontline communities and climate organizations for skipping that U.N. summit, supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, enabling the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, and refusing to declare a national climate emergency.
On Thursday, the Biden administration released new proposed guidance on clean energy tax credits from the IRA.
"President Biden must do so much more if he wants to be taken seriously by young voters," Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in response to the guidance. "He is overseeing an explosion in oil and gas production that has resulted in the U.S. producing more fossil fuels than ever before."
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Groups Sue to Stop Biden From Offering 73 Million Acres to Oil Drillers in Gulf of Mexico
"We should be moving away from fossil fuels, not enabling an astounding amount of drilling for more than a generation to come," said one advocate.
Mar 06, 2023
Seven groups on Monday filed a legal challenge to the U.S. Interior Department's Lease Sale 259, which would offer 73.3 million acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to the highest-bidding oil and gas drillers.
Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, and Friends of the Earth filed the lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia. The complaint asks the court to "vacate or enjoin any leases issued or actions taken pursuant to the unlawful [sale] unless and until defendants comply with the law."
President Joe Biden's administration "previously canceled this and other sales, citing delays and 'conflicting court rulings,'" the groups explained in a joint statement. But then right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—the top congressional recipient of fossil fuel industry cash during the 2022 election cycle and a long-time coal profiteer—made his support for Biden's landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), contingent on the inclusion of oil and gas leasing provisions.
Congressional Democrats, with zero votes to spare in the Senate amid unified Republican opposition, passed a Manchin-approved version of the IRA last August. Lease Sale 259, one of the largest offshore auctions in U.S. history, is now scheduled for March 28, less than a month before the 13th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP disaster.
The groups acknowledged that the IRA directs the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to hold the lease sale. However, they stressed, "it does not require such a vast area to be auctioned to industry, nor does it exempt the sale from any existing laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act."
"Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible."
"Lease Sale 259 would offer up all unleased areas in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, which could lock in a massive drilling operation to extract more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years," the groups warned.
Such a move would fly in the face of the Biden administration's purported commitment to slashing planet-heating pollution and speeding up the adoption of renewables, critics argued.
"This administration has pledged to oversee a historic transition to clean energy, but actions speak louder than words," said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. "We don't need a billion new barrels of crude oil threatening people and ecosystems in the Gulf."
Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth, said, "Yet again we find ourselves in the courtroom with the Biden administration over another unlawful and disastrous oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico."
Last year, a federal judge blocked Lease Sale 257, the nation's largest-ever offshore lease sale wherein more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico were put on the auction block.
“With each carbon bomb he drops, the president's pledge to end oil and gas drilling feels long forgotten," said Templeton. "BOEM should be proceeding with the utmost caution and ensuring that its oil and gas decisions comply with federal laws, not adding to our climate crisis."
\u201cToday we & our Gulf partners filed a federal court legal challenge to the Department of the Interior\u2019s lease sale 259 that would offer 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing. https://t.co/7XuIJnDgDj\u201d— Bayou City Waterkeeper (@Bayou City Waterkeeper) 1678125892
According to the complaint, BOEM's approval of Lease Sale 259 "was based on insufficient and arbitrary environmental analyses" in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The agency's final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) "failed to take the required 'hard look' at the significant impacts of this massive lease sale," the suit alleges.
Specifically, the complaint says, BOEM "did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that this massive lease sale will result in only 'slightly higher domestic emissions' than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments."
In addition, BOEM "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 Lease Sale 259—on Gulf communities," according to the suit. The groups also accuse the agency of ignoring "the latest air quality data" and presenting "an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents."
Moreover, the complaint continues, BOEM "failed to properly disclose and consider the significant harm from ship strikes, pollution, and oil spills on endangered species such as the Rice's whale" and five of the world's seven species of sea turtles. The agency claimed that such impacts would be "negligible," even as experts fear the Rice's whale population has dropped below 50.
Finally, the suit accuses BOEM of failing "to consider reasonable scaled-back alternatives to its proposed action," and refusing "to adequately respond to plaintiffs' comments on the draft SEIS, offering only boilerplate responses and failing to grapple with and respond to substantive technical and legal critiques."
"The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously."
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said that "selling off more of our lands and waters to the fossil fuel industry is the last thing we should do at a time when we need to be rapidly transitioning away from oil and gas to meet our nation's climate goals and create a livable planet for all."
"Offshore drilling devastates millions of acres of nature, contributes to an increasing number of climate disasters, and creates a quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions," said Manuel. "While the IRA represents a historic step forward in achieving our nation's climate goals, we cannot let the bad provisions of the bill, including oil and gas leasing, undercut what we stand to gain."
Kristen Schlemmer, legal director for Bayou City Waterkeeper, echoed Manuel, noting that vulnerable residents of the Gulf Coast are already reeling from petrochemical pollution, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and intensified storms.
"We're at a point where we should be moving away from fossil fuels, not enabling an astounding amount of drilling for more than a generation to come," said Schlemmer. "For communities along the Houston Ship Channel, which are predominantly Black, brown, and lower-income, Lease Sale 259 creates an especially toxic combination of risks."
"More drilling means more facilities in their backyards," she added. "This will compound already elevated rates of cancer and heart and lung diseases, while also increasing risks during major storms."
In the words of Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at CBD, "Holding this offshore oil lease sale without careful environmental review is both unlawful and morally reprehensible."
"More oil drilling in the Gulf is too big a risk for the communities and wildlife living there, and too harmful to the climate," said Monsell. "The Biden administration needs to end new extraction, phase out drilling, and start taking its commitment to climate action seriously."
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Did the Feds Just Issue a 'Death Warrant' to Marine Mammals?
Conservation group warns that environmental impact statement allowing for seismic airguns used for oil and gas exploration "will jeopardize wildlife"
Feb 28, 2014
An environmental impact statement released Thursday from the federal government could mount to a "death sentence" for marine mammals as the pursuit for oil and gas deposits may turn a 300,000 square mile area in the Atlantic Ocean into a "blast zone," a conservation group warns.
In its final environmental impact review, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stated that it had "establishe[d] multiple mitigation measures designed to minimize the impacts to marine life" from seismic testing, which can include the use of air guns blasts, in a stretch of the Atlantic that extends from Delaware to Florida.
The area is home to 39 marine mammals, and the Bureau expects 34 of them to be impacted, including six endangered species of whales. One of those is the North Atlantic Right Whale, whose total population may be only 450.
The review states:
Deep penetration seismic airgun surveys may occur most extensively in Federal waters of the [area of interest] if authorized. These types of surveys are conducted by vessels towing an array of airguns that emit acoustic energy pulses into the seafloor over long durations and over large areas. They are controversial because of public concerns over potential impacts of the sound produced by these surveys to marine life.
International ocean conservation group Oceana describes the sound from these air gun blasts as being "100,000 times more intense than what one would experience if standing near a jet engine."
The group slammed BOEM's "preferred alternative," which allows for the use of these seismic airguns, as a failure to protect marine life as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"By failing to consider relevant science, the Obama administration's decision could be a death sentence for many marine mammals, needlessly turning the Atlantic Ocean into a blast zone," stated Jacqueline Savitz, Vice President for U.S. Oceans at Oceana. "If seismic airguns are allowed in the Atlantic, it will jeopardize wildlife as well as commercial and recreational fisheries, tourism and coastal recreation--putting more than 730,000 jobs in the blast zone at risk."
"In its rush to finalize this proposal, the Obama administration is failing to consider the cumulative impacts that these repeated dynamite-like blasts will have on vital behaviors like mating, feeding, breathing, communicating and navigating," she stated.
In addition to the airgun blasts, marine life will face other potential disturbances from oil and gas exploration activities including seafloor disturbing activities, noise, trash and fuel spills.
Savitz's warning comes a week after over 100 marine scientists and conservation biologists sent a letter to the Administration urging it to "use the best available science before permitting seismic surveys for offshore oil and gas in the mid- and south Atlantic."
BOEM states that it currently has 9 permit requests for such exploration activities, and expects more to come.
The final approval for the plan could mean oil and gas exploration in the mid- and south-Atlantic as soon as 2017.
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