Delay of offshore oil leasing plan sparks outrage from Manchin
Interior Dept. prioritizing ‘radical climate change agenda,’ senator asserts
houston — In his latest clash with the White House, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.VA.) sharply criticized the Biden administration Wednesday for delays on a new federal offshore drilling plan that the Interior Department says it needs until December to put into effect.
Manchin — an oil industry advocate who has been key to supporting Biden policies in a narrowly divided Congress — has recently pushed back against the administration for its appointments and its implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, including on how it affects oil and natural gas leasing in Alaska.
In court documents this week, Interior Department officials argue that they need the rest of this year to finish a legally required five-year plan to lease offshore territory for oil and gas development.
The plan is months behind deadlines set in law, but in a federal appeals court brief Monday, department officials said they need the extra time to review public comments and complete other legally required analyses on a proposal issued last summer.
Manchin says the delays pose a risk to steady domestic supplies of oil and natural gas. He accused the administration of slow-walking a new plan as part of its push against fossil fuels. He also said the administration was failing to meet legal requirements that every other administration has met to have a new five-year offshore leasing plan in place before the prior plan expired.
“They are putting their radical climate agenda ahead of our nation’s energy security, and they are willing to go to great lengths to do it,” Manchin said in a news release Wednesday. “I will hold their feet to the fire on this.”
An Interior Department spokeswoman declined to respond to Manchin’s comments.
Although months of further delays have been widely expected, Interior had not made any announcement about its timeline or publicly detailed its plans before Monday’s court filing.
The last five-year plan expired in June, and Interior officials had signaled last summer that a new proposal for 2023-2028 was unlikely to be in place by the start of this year.
The industry’s largest trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has sued over the delays — which have been developing since the Trump administration — and has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to order Interior to approve a new program by Sept. 30. Interior officials said in their court brief Monday that that is not enough time and, further, that the judges should reject the API’S request because the group does not have standing to file such a challenge.
The plan is a top priority for oil companies because offshore sites account for roughly 15 percent of U.S. production, and that output is likely to decline years from now if the government limits new leasing in the meantime. Leaders at the API and other industry executives at the CERAWEEK energy conference here have said they are frustrated that the administration has let so many deadlines lapse and consider Interior’s plan a major signal for how Biden will treat U.S. oil companies.
“We’re 250 days from when the last five-year plan expired,” API President Mike Sommers said in an interview Monday. “So are they going to do a five-year plan that actually encourages development in the Gulf of Mexico?”
Manchin has expressed outrage in recent weeks at several policies of the administration, especially over how it is fulfilling the energy and climate provisions of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Manchin helped negotiate the spending package and has criticized the administration as reluctant to meet the spirit of the law, especially its offshore drilling mandates and rules tied to electric-vehicle tax credits.
He has threatened to withhold support for executive branch appointees that need Senate confirmation, a major challenge for Biden because of Democrats’ slim Senate majority and because Manchin controls the Senate Energy Committee.
On Wednesday morning, he announced that he would vote against Daniel Werfel to be the new leader of the Internal Revenue Service, largely because of the administration’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Manchin sees as an “energy security” law instead of a statute to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In a statement, Manchin called Werfel “supremely qualified” but said he would vote no because he had “zero faith [ Werfel] will be given the autonomy to perform the job in accordance with the law.”
Last week, Manchin slammed the Interior Department for its handling of an Alaska oil and gas lease — the Cook Inlet Lease Sale 258 — that was mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act. The West Virginian helped to write the legislation.
Manchin cited a leaked memo suggesting that Interior might reject the lease for climate change reasons. Such a decision, he said, would show the department was pandering to environmental groups “at the expense of shoring up American energy security and keeping Americans safe.”