By Bruce Beaubouef, Managing Editor
NEW ORLEANS — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must hold Lease Sale 261 within the next 37 days, according to a ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals which came down on Tuesday.
The appeals court rejected environmentalists’ arguments against the sale and threw out plans by the Biden administration to scale back the sale to protect an endangered species of whale.
The ruling means that the lease sale — once set for September, but postponed multiple times amid legal fights — will be held in December. And it must cover 73 million acres (30 million hectares), as originally planned when the administration announced the sale in the spring.
The administration had later scaled back the area covered by the lease sale to 67 million acres (27 million hectares) as part of an agreement to protect the endangered Rice’s whale. But the state of Louisiana joined oil and gas companies in opposing the changes.
A federal judge in southwest Louisiana had ordered the sale to go on without the whale protections, which also included regulations involving vessel speed and personnel. That led to an appeal by environmental groups — and delays while the arguments continued.
Oil industry attorneys disputed that the protections were needed in the area to be leased and said the administration had not gone through legally required procedures to impose the new restrictions.
Industry supporters also had been critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the sale, which was ordered in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Lease Sale 261 is the final offshore lease sale mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act and is likely to be the only offshore sale scheduled to take place until 2025. In September, the Biden administration issued a proposed final five-year program for federal offshore leasing that included three offshore lease sales over the next five years, the lowest number of lease sales in the history of the program.
The American Petroleum Institute released the following statement from Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers in response to the ruling: “Energy independence scored an important win tonight with the Fifth Circuit decision lifting unjustified restrictions on oil and natural gas vessels and restoring acreage for offshore energy development. The US Gulf of Mexico plays a critical role in maintaining affordable, reliable American energy production, and today’s decision creates greater certainty for the essential energy workforce and the entire Gulf Coast economy.”
11.15.2023
