Biden Seeks to Block New Offshore Drilling in Atlantic, Pacific
By: Timothy Puko (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration plans to block new offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while allowing limited expansion in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's south coast.
The proposal released by the Interior Department on Friday evening would allow as many as 11 oil lease sales for offshore drilling over the course of five years.
But the plan is still being developed, and gives the administration several options—including one that would forgo new lease sales entirely, according to the Interior Department. Ultimately a final decision is months away.
Environmental groups blasted the plan and said they would push for the option with no new leasing. Some voiced concern the administration was backing away from President Biden’s pledge as a candidate to block new drilling on federal territory.
“President Biden campaigned on climate leadership, but he seems poised to let us down at the worst possible moment,” Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “The reckless approval of yet more offshore drilling would mean more oil spills, more dead wildlife and more polluted communities.”
A White House spokesman declined to respond directly. Interior Department officials said they didn’t have a preferred option, and that the ultimate decision—following a public comment period—could be one that called for no new leases.
Some oil advocates, meanwhile, said the plan didn’t go far enough to ensure future supplies of domestic oil to counter rising energy prices globally.
“Our allies across the free world are in desperate need of American oil and gas,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), a swing vote for Mr. Biden’s agenda in the 50-50 Senate, said in a statement. “I am disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales is even an option on the table.”
Industry lobbyists applauded the proposal to expand leasing but noted that many potential roadblocks lie ahead.
“This proposed leasing plan is just one step in the process, and it is imperative that the Administration act swiftly to finalize and implement the program as proposed, without reduced acreage,” Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said in a statement.
Mr. Biden made a transition away from fossil fuels a top priority when he took office, but in recent months rising inflation driven in part by higher fuel costs has led him to recalibrate—pushing oil companies to produce more and tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in a bid to lower prices.
White House officials have wrestled with the plan for weeks without making a decision as environmental groups made it clear they believed Mr. Biden wasn’t moving his climate agenda quickly enough.
On Thursday Mr. Biden’s efforts took a fresh blow from a new Supreme Court ruling that restricts what presidents can do through the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory agencies to address climate change and other issues.
The most expansive option in the Interior Department proposal would seek to help the industry by allowing it to grow in parts of the western and central Gulf of Mexico where it already operates.
Congress has set large parts of the eastern Gulf near Florida off limits, and the proposal wouldn’t allow any new leases there. It would offer no more than one lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
“From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Today, we put forward an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing.”
The proposal released Friday is part of a process to implement a new five-year plan for drilling on the outer continental shelf required under federal law. The proposal comes months behind schedule to meet the legal requirements, and faces several more months of reviews before the department can offer new offshore areas for lease.
Under even the quickest scenarios, that might not lead to new oil-and-gas leasing until 2024 or 2025 and new development potentially years after that. That delay frustrates some in the industry while environmentalists say it also undermines arguments from Mr. Manchin and other industry advocates that the plan is helpful to address rising prices.
The oil industry says it needs continued leasing to maintain its reserves for future production and to help prevent future price shocks like one that has recently sent energy prices to historic highs. About 15% of U.S. oil production comes from drilling in federal waters.
The industry’s largest trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has called for lifting restrictions on offshore drilling as part of a recent 10-point plan “to restore U.S. energy leadership.”
The industry also wants the administration to reinstate plans it canceled this year to auction drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.
The Trump administration in early 2018 had issued a draft proposal for a new plan that called for a vast expansion of offshore drilling. That plan called for opening up 90% of offshore areas to drilling and replacing the Obama-era plan that kept only 6% of the same acres available for drilling.
But Trump administration officials scaled back the plan amid opposition from Congress and several Republican state leaders.
The plan was ultimately sidelined in 2019 , when then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt cited legal uncertainties after a federal judge said that an Obama-era ban on drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska must remain in place unless Congress passes legislation to end it.
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