Regeration Try Try Again Oil and Gas
(CNN)One of President Joe Biden'south boldest environmental entrada promises was to ban new oil and natural gas leasing on public country and h2o. But on Wednesday his administration volition open more than than fourscore million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to sale for drilling.
The sale is at odds with Biden's climate agenda -- the President has also promised to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half past 2030 -- and ecology advocates say it could set US climate goals dorsum for years.
The administration tried in its first days in office to put a stop to new oil and gas drilling. On Jan 27, Biden signed an executive order that paused new permits and directed the Department of Interior to launch a "rigorous review" of existing programs related to fossil fuel development.
But a lawsuit filed in March on behalf of 13 states led to a judgment that blocked Biden's pause.
"Millions and mayhap billions of dollars are at stake," Judge Terry Doughty wrote in his ruling. Doughty was nominated in 2017 to the US District Court for the Western Commune of Louisiana by then-President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration is moving forward with the new leasing, and White Business firm printing secretarial assistant Jen Psaki said their easily are tied.
"Nosotros're required to comply with the injunction; information technology's a legal case and legal process," Psaki told reporters Monday. "Just it's important for advocates and other people out there to sympathise that it's non aligned with our view, the President's policies or the executive order that he signed."
Psaki said the U.s.a. Department of Justice is highly-seasoned the Louisiana decision. But in the meantime, the sale is going frontwards, and some ecology advocates are strongly criticizing the assistants for not taking stronger action to block it.
The Justice Department did not render CNN'south request for comment.
Brettny Hardy, an chaser with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice leading a lawsuit against the Interior Department, argued the Biden administration could have filed a more than ambitious appeal in court, declined to concur the sale this week or withdrawn some of the areas in the Gulf from leasing.
"The sale is going to lock in [oil and gas] production for years to come," Hardy told CNN. "Past that time, we need to be moving away from fossil fuels in gild to survive. This lease sale is a really critical juncture and is sending us in the exact opposite direction."
The Trump administration, which first proposed the Gulf of United mexican states sale in 2017, estimated it would generate 21 meg to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and from 55 billion to 4.42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The Interior Department's review of the federal oil and gas leasing program -- which was initially due this summer -- is nonetheless not public and its release engagement is unclear. Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz told CNN she did not have an update on the review.
Schwartz said the review will include an analysis of how much greenhouse gas would exist emitted by Gulf Coast leases.
"Interior is conducting a more comprehensive analysis of greenhouse gas impacts from potential oil and gas lease sales than ever before," Schwartz said.
Ecology groups, including Earthjustice, have sued Interior for moving ahead with the sale, arguing that the section is relying on outdated analyses and climate modeling and shouldn't proceed with the auction until there's new information on the emissions touch on.
"Information technology'southward deeply troubling that the people charged with protecting our public lands and oceans are ignoring court rulings and their own data showing this lease auction is illegal and reckless," Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
House Natural Resource Chair Raúl Grijalva sharply criticized the administration for moving forward with the lease earlier making its review public, just days after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
"This administration went to Scotland and told the earth that America's climate leadership is back, and now information technology's virtually to manus over eighty million acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to fossil fuel companies," Grijalva said in a statement. "This is happening under the same lax environmental and safety requirements and inadequate fiscal assurances that accept put Americans in damage's way for decades."
Though information technology came too belatedly to forestall the auction from going forward, ecology advocates suing the administration hope to get a conclusion on their case by January ane, before the resulting leases would go into consequence.
"Nosotros set our schedule so that we take an opportunity to get a determination before then," Hardy said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/biden-oil-gas-leasing-gulf-of-mexico-climate/index.html
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