Oil industry sues Biden administration for shrinking Gulf lease to protect endangered whale

The state of Louisiana, Chevron and the foremost oil and gas industry trade group sued the Biden administration Thursday over an alteration to Gulf of Mexico lease sales aimed at protecting the endangered Rice’s whale.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) final sale notice for the upcoming lease sale, published Wednesday, included the new protections, which removed just more than six million acres from the lease area. Louisiana, Chevron and the American Petroleum Institute argued that the alteration violates the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that mandates the leases be sold in September.

“Despite Congress’ clear intention in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration has announced a ‘lease sale in name only’ that removes approximately 6 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico from the sale and adds new and unjustified restrictions on oil and natural gas vessels operating in this area, ignoring all other vessel traffic,” API senior vice president and general counsel Ryan Meyers said in a statement.

“Together with the State of Louisiana and Chevron U.S.A. Inc., we intend to use every legal tool at our disposal to challenge these actions.”

The curtailment of the leasing acreage was part of a settlement agreement to protect the Gulf’s Rice’s whale population. Only about 50 of the whales remain in the Gulf, and about 20 percent of the whales were killed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

In addition to reducing the size of the lease area, under the settlement agreement, the BOEM will require any purchasers of oil and gas leases in the whales’ habitat to take steps to reduce threats to them, including making sure industry ships travel through those areas at no faster than 10 knots.  

A coalition of conservation organizations, including Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Turtle Island Restoration Network, had sued over Gulf protections in 2020, arguing the Trump administration’s protections were insufficient. That lawsuit was paused as a result of the settlement agreement on the lease sale acreage this week.

A BOEM spokesperson declined comment to The Hill.

Updated at 1:03 p.m. Aug. 25