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Environmentalists angered by US Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale
5/4/2023
News
Fossil fuel companies looking to extract oil and natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico have secured access to 1.6mn acres of US waters offered in the latest auction of drilling rights, in a move decried by environmental campaigners.
A total of 73.3mn acres were opened up for bidding by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in Lease Sale 259, with some 13,600 blocks of outer continental shelf acreage in federal waters off the Gulf of Mexico at stake.
In total, 32 companies participated, bidding for 313 tracts covering 1.6mn acres in the Gulf of Mexico, with the sale generating a total of $263.8mn in high bids. Companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP were among the top buyers with dozens of bids. Many of the blocks attracted only single offers, with bids ranging from as low as $750 up to millions of dollars.
The BOEM stipulated that leases resulting from this sale must mitigate potential adverse effects on protected species and avoid potential conflicts with other ocean uses in the region.
Following the recent approval of the controversial Willow project in Alaska, however, the US government is facing renewed criticism from environmental groups that note President Biden’s 2020 campaign promises to combat climate change are being contradicted, notably the plan ‘banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters’.
The Biden Administration says it was compelled to open the huge swath of Gulf waters to drilling because of stipulations in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The budget act coalesced around a deal that Democratic leaders reached with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, inserting requirements for new oil and gas leases.
