Federal Judge Tosses Biden-Era O&G Lease Sale Over Climate Impact

 

Last Thursday, a D.C. circuit court judge ruled that a Biden-era oil and gas lease sale was unlawful because the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to consider the impact of climate-warming emissions from the project, or the potential effect of extra activity on the endangered Rice's whale. The ruling unwinds a Biden-era policy decision that supported offshore oil and gas - but it conflicts even more deeply with the priorities of the Trump administration.  

District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta found that the March 2023 lease sales violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the agency "failed to take a hard look" at the CO2 emissions from the project. BOEM projected that the 2,500-square-mile lease areas would produce about 110 bcm of gas and 1.1 billion barrels of gas over the course of the next 50 years, resulting in foreseeable downstream CO2 emissions. However, BOEM's analysis concluded that leasing in the Gulf would lower global CO2e upstream emissions because of the comparatively low carbon footprint of drilling in the U.S. Gulf (relative to other international sources). 

“We are pleased the court recognized the serious hazards Lease Sale 259 would have inflicted upon Gulf coast communities, as well as the harms it would have caused to Gulf ecosystems and highly imperiled species like the endangered Rice’s whale,” said Devorah Ancel, Senior Attorney with Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, a plaintiff in the suit. 

The American Petroleum Institute panned the judge's decision and accused environmental groups of "weaponizing" NEPA, according to the AP.