BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM COULD ALLOW MORE OFFSHORE OIL, GAS DRILLING
Plan would ban new leases off the coasts of Pacific, Atlantic
The Biden administration opened the door Friday to more offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters over the next five years, setting a course for future U.S. fossil fuel extraction just a day after suffering a major climate setback at the Supreme Court.
The proposed program for offshore drilling between 2023 and 2028 would ban exploration off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. But by leaving the possibility for new drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, the announcement falls short of President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to end federal fossil fuel leasing for good.
The plan moves the country further from its pledge to slash the nation’s planetwarming pollution in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels and help avert even fiercer fires, storms and drought driven by rising temperatures. Biden’s climate agenda now hinges on whether Democrats can pass a reconciliation package in the Senate that includes robust environmental policies.
“The Supreme Court just put a lead ball around his ankle with regard to his executive authority,” said John Podesta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “If you don’t get reconciliation, together with the constraints that the Supreme Court has put on, I think there’s no way you can get the 50 percent reduction by the end of the decade.”
The offshore plan, along with other events this week, underscores the political and legal limits in the United States to tackle global warming. It also carries risks for Democrats as Americans experience record-breaking gasoline prices ahead of
November’s midterm election and as many on the left demand stricter limits on fossil fuels.
On Thursday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court struck a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to compel power providers to give up on burning coal. And the Interior Department was compelled by an
injunction from a lower court to lease acreage in the western United States this week for onshore drilling.
The consequences of warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels by continuing to burn oil and other fossil fuels are enormous for humanity: If left unchecked, global warming may stall headway on combating hunger, poverty and disease worldwide. To meet that goal, the International Energy Agency has urged halting investment in new fossil fuel supplies.
“We’re going to be slowing down the progress that we otherwise might be making,” said Brian O’Neill, a chief scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute and a lead author on a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on impacts and vulnerability.
The Interior Department is considering 10 potential auctions in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet in Alaska. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland emphasized that the plan has not been finalized and that her department is considering the option of having no lease sales at all. The plan narrows areas
considered for oil and gas leasing from one proposed under President Donald Trump in 2018.
“A Proposed Program is not a decision to issue specific leases or to authorize any drilling or development,” Haaland said in a statement. “From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy.”
During his bid for the White House, Biden vowed to ban new oil and gas drilling across federal lands and waters. “No more drilling on federal lands, period,” he said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “Period, period, period.”
In the Senate, there is growing optimism that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who effectively ended negotiations over a previous iteration of a sweeping package, can strike a deal. In recent days, Democratic leaders have agreed upon a proposal to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, a policy that would be part of the broader economic package.
Since December, when Manchin blocked Biden’s original Build Back Better proposal, the senator has expressed reservations about the price tag of any potential package, warning about the rising national debt and skyrocketing
inflation. But with only 50 seats in the Senate, the Democratic Party needs Manchin’s vote to pass any legislation. As a result, party leaders have relented and cut many of their domestic priorities from the proposed package.
Energy policy, though, is still expected to remain a centerpiece of the potential bill — Manchin has long called for protecting the United States’ energy security and increasing its energy independence from foreign nations. But aides say that negotiations over what the energy and climate components of the deal would look like are still under way and
that final decisions are probably weeks away.
In a statement Friday, Manchin said he was “pleased” the plan had come out, though he was “disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales is even an option on the table.”
“Our leasing programs are a critical component of American energy security,” Manchin said. “I hope the administration will ultimately greenlight a plan that will expand domestic energy production, done in the cleanest way possible, while also taking the necessary steps to get our offshore leasing program back on track to give the necessary market
signals to provide price relief for every American.”
Inside the administration, Biden officials said that the Supreme Court’s decision was not a surprise and that they had largely expected to lose the case.
Biden’s national climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, who crafted the EPA rule at the center of the Supreme Court case, has emphasized in recent days that the administration is focused on finding alternative ways, particularly through the Defense Production Act, to continue to meet its climate goals.
“His use of the Defense Production Act to accelerate all this domestic production is really, I think, going to be one of the ways in which this president makes it clear to people that he is going to keep driving the change that’s necessary,” McCarthy said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, referring to Biden’s push to make rare earth minerals available for the electrical vehicle market.
Biden’s efforts to curtail fossil fuel drilling, however, have faced serious legal and political setbacks.
Soon after taking office, he issued an executive order instructing the Interior Department to pause all new lease sales on public lands and waters while it reviewed how to adjust the program.
A federal judge in Louisiana last year blocked that pause. And Biden faced criticism over leasing from Manchin, along with many Republicans.
Federal law requires the Interior Department to release a plan for new offshore oil and gas lease sales every five years, but the law gives the administration broad discretion to decide where and whether to allow new drilling.
It takes about five to 10 years to start producing oil from a new offshore lease, according to the Interior Department. That means the proposal issued Friday will have little immediate impact on current prices at the pump — though it could have significant implications for the United States’ ability to meet its pledge to cut emissions by 2030.
The western and central portion of the Gulf of Mexico makes up the heart of the U.S. offshore energy business, where about 1.7 million barrels of oil are extracted a day, mainly off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and piped to refineries to be turned into gasoline, jet fuel and plastics. The gulf accounts for about a seventh of all domestic crude produced.