Biden Administration Won’t Fight Court Ruling Revoking Massive Oil Drilling Leases in Gulf of Mexico

Brown pelicans with young and eggs on an island surrounded by BP oil in Barataria Bay Louisiana, June 2010: Glynn Wilson

Staff Report –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Biden administration will not challenge a federal court ruling saying the Department of the Interior under former President Trump failed to take climate change into account when it auctioned off 1.7 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling last year.

The decision invalidated the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in the country’s history in a ruling that was cheered by environmentalists, but challenged by oil industry advocates, including the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s largest trade group.

In a document filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, attorneys for the federal government indicated they would not appeal the district court’s ruling invalidating the leases, yet leaving the door open for the possibility of the bringing back up the lease sale if the appeals court ruling is overturned on further appeal by industry.

The federal government’s position did not come as a surprise, since shortly after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden suspended new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters. The Interior Department’s environmental analysis justifying the sale came under the Trump administration, and from the start, the Biden Interior Department was not interested in pursuing the lease auction.

It was a Louisiana judge who struck down Biden’s executive order moratorium on oil and gas drilling last summer, forcing administration officials to go through with the sale in November.

While 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico were offered up for drilling leases, the Department only sold a fraction of that amount, netting about $192 million, which would have ranked as the most profitable offshore oil and gas lease auction since March 2019.

If the case is overturned on appeal, Interior could revamp the environmental analysis so that it fully accounts for the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, and hold a new auction, but that appears unlikely.

In the court filing, first reported by The Washington Post, the administration indicated time has run out, since the five-year offshore drilling plan expires at the end of June.

“To be sure, Interior may decide to hold lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico that put up for sale the same blocks offered in the November 17, 2021, sale,” the document states. “But that possibility is pre-decisional and speculative at this time, as there will not be a new leasing program in place after June 30 until Interior adopts a new five year program.”

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