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Days after President Biden urged attendees at the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow to "seize the moment" to act on climate change, the Interior Department is planning to hold a lease sale tomorrow offering more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies.
The sale could produce as much as a billion barrels of oil and more than 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years, essentially setting off a "carbon bomb" at the moment when warnings about climate impacts are more dire than ever. Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity said, "It's hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit. Holding this lease sale will only lead to more harmful oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast."
Shortly after being sworn into office in January, President Biden followed through on a campaign promise and issued an executive order pausing all new oil and gas leasing. In June,13 states sued the administration and a federal judge ordered lease sales to resume. The Interior Department said it would comply with the ruling and "continue to exercise the authority and discretion provided under the law to conduct leasing in a manner that takes into account the program's many deficiencies." Monsell with the Center for Biological Diversity argues the administration has not yet exhausted its authority and discretion, saying it "has more than sufficient authority to choose not to hold the lease sale and to cancel it."
Interior Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau spoke at an event hosted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago yesterday and reiterated the agency's desire to reform oil and gas leasing programs. Beaudreau espoused a need to "flip the script" on the use of public lands away from one dominated by oil and gas interests and "align the programs with the realities facing the United States and the world, particularly around climate," in an effort to provide "a fair return" for taxpayers "for a shared resource that they own."
Despite Beaudreau's comments, climate advocates are worried about the impacts of a lease sale in the Gulf that is the size of New Mexico. "This isn't just hypocritical, it's outright deceitful," said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians. "It truly calls into question whether the Biden administration's climate agenda is nothing but broken promises."
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