Biden Administration Plans Massive Auction of Oil and Gas Leases

Despite promises, it’s bigger than any lease sale under Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden at the UN Climate Conference earlier this month.Evan Vucci/AP

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of Climate Desk

When President Joe Biden spoke about fossil fuels during a Democratic presidential debate in March 2020, he promised to “take on the fossil fuel industry” and rapidly transition the nation away from planet-warming fossil fuels.

“No more subsidies for [the] fossil fuel industry,” Biden said. “No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. Ends.”

Environmental advocates say Biden is breaking that pledge now as the administration prepares to hold the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history on Nov. 17.

The sale comes on the heels of COP26, the United Nations climate talks in Scotland, where diplomats are on track to strike a deal that falls far short of what scientists say is necessary to avert catastrophic warming. The Department of the Interior will offer up more than 80 million acres—an area larger than the state of New Mexico—of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling. It is bigger than any lease sale conducted under President Donald Trump’s fossil-fuel-friendly administration, and Interior estimates it will lead to the production of an additional 1.1 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over several decades.

The administration argues its hands are tied, following the June decision by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana to strike down Biden’s executive order temporarily pausing new oil and gas leases across federal lands and waters.

“The administration has made clear that it disagrees with the ruling and the Department of Justice has appealed it, but the government must comply with it in the meantime,” White House spokesman Vedant Patel said in an email statement, noting that Interior previously canceled the pending lease sale.

The injunction stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 14 Republican attorneys against the administration. The judge’s opinion relied in part on a study of the leasing pause’s potential economic impacts, which an industry trade group helped shape and that multiple independent researchers dismissed.

Legal experts HuffPost interviewed said Biden and his team have some avenues to scale back, delay or cancel the sale, but that they’d come with legal and political risks the administration may be unwilling to take.

Sam Kalen, a natural resources law professor at the University of Wyoming, called the Louisiana judge’s ruling as it pertains to offshore leasing “quite questionable.” If a non-governmental organization were to file a complaint seeking to enjoin the upcoming Gulf sale on legitimate grounds—for example, a faulty environmental analysis—then the administration could opt to postpone the auction pending a resolution in court, he said.

Drew Caputo, an attorney with environmental group Earthjustice, said the Biden administration could have gone further than simply appealing the judge’s ruling by requesting the appeals court stay, or suspend, the order while the administration argues its case in court.

Additionally, Caputo said, it could have declared the sale illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act due to its future climate impacts or used its authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw large offshore areas from future leasing, much like the Obama administration did with Arctic and Atlantic waters in 2016.

“I’m not saying there wouldn’t be legal and political consequences of taking any of these steps. I assume that the industry and their political allies would sue instantly,” Caputo said. “But we have an unbroken, scientific consensus that we are out of time to take action to deal with climate change. Given the fact that 25 percent of US carbon emissions come from federal oil, gas and coal, there is no way the US can meet its climate obligations by continuing to operate the program with business as usual. And that’s what proceeding with this lease sale does.”

Earthjustice sued the administration in September in an attempt to block the Gulf lease sale.

In a letter last week, Earthjustice and more than 250 other organizations called on Biden to cancel the Gulf auction amid what Biden himself has warned is a “code red” moment on climate. Going through with it, the groups said, would “make a mockery” of his own commitments on a global stage at the COP26 climate conference this month.

“There is still time to keep your promise to end new leases on public lands and waters and address environmental racism,” reads the letter, spearheaded by environmental organization Friends of the Earth. “Please utilize your existing authority and defer Lease Sale 257 to reckon with the latest evidence and properly estimate and acknowledge the full range of impacts from lease sales in this region.”

Interior is also moving ahead with onshore oil and gas auctions early next year across some 700,000 acres in multiple Western states, including Wyoming and Colorado, although the Bureau of Land Management recently announced it will for the first time begin analyzing greenhouse gas emissions and weighing the climate impacts of proposed leases—a move that could ultimately result in leases being scaled back or canceled.

Many advocates have grown increasingly frustrated with what they see as a disconnect between Biden’s words and actions on climate.

During a keynote speech at the UN climate summit, Biden described the next 10 years as “a decisive decade” and assured world leaders that the US will once again lead the global effort to confront the climate threat. But with gasoline prices soaring, the administration has asked foreign nations to boost fossil fuel production—a move that Biden acknowledged “​​seems like an irony.”

“It does, on the surface, seem inconsistent,” Biden said at the Group of 20 summit on Oct. 31 before heading to COP26. “But it’s not at all inconsistent in that no one has anticipated that this year we’d be in a position—or even next year—that we’re not going to use any more oil or gas; that we’re not going to be engaged in any fossil fuels.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate