The government is barring protesters from an offshore drilling lease sale next month, the latest sign that the Obama administration is growing wary of intensifying anti-fossil fuel activism during the presidential campaign season.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management made the decision to webcast the Aug. 24 lease sale in Texas after a raucous bunch of protesters nearly shut down a sale in Louisiana in March.
Protesters associated with the anti-fossil fuel “Keep it in the Ground” movement had attempted to stop the sale of a federal lease to drill in the Gulf of Mexico in March.
Caryl Fagot, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said the federal agency, part of the Interior Department, was planning on making all lease sales web-based to reduce cost and increase transparency. But the protests have expedited the agency’s decision to begin webcasting lease sales sooner, and the agency will begin doing so from now on, she said.
“This would be to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the sale,” Fagot said.
“The lease sale is not a place where the public comes to comment, anyway,” she said, explaining that next month’s sale follows 18 public hearings where environmentalists and others could have voiced their concerns.
Local reports described a scene in March where environmental protesters stormed a stage where the transaction was taking place in a concerted effort to stop the sale.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has called the protesters “naive.”
But the ocean energy bureau isn’t the only agency that has had to take steps in light of intensifying anti-fossil fuel and climate change protests.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the nation’s energy watchdog, has become a repeated target for activists and has taken similar steps to bar protesters.
The five-member commission made up of Democrats and Republicans in May decided to shut down its public meeting and webcast it, after the commissioners were targeted by activists at their homes.
The coalition of groups called the “Rubberstamp Rebellion” opposed FERC’s approval of natural gas pipelines that they argue would drive increased production of fossil fuels that are causing the Earth to warm.
Many of the same groups are planning on intensifying their campaigns during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate, said the Democrats are planning on ratifying the most progressive platform in the party’s history, underscoring many of the principles of the “Keep it in the Ground” movement.
NextGen called the Republican National Convention last week in Cleveland a meeting of the “Grand Oil Party,” saying the group opposes the GOP’s fossil fuel-heavy platform and nominee Donald Trump.
“Instead of embracing the opportunity to create millions of good-paying American jobs by transitioning the U.S. from dirty fossil fuels to a clean energy economy, the GOP wants to double down on Big Coal and Big Oil,” the group said.
The group told Steyer supporters not to be fooled by the reports of the “internal discord within the GOP,” saying Republican senators are still “unified in their loyalty to Donald Trump and his toxic energy agenda.”
“Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey and Nevada Congressman Joe Heck tried to hide their allegiance by skipping the convention — NextGen Climate kept them honest,” it said.
“Protesters In Pittsburgh asked Toomey ‘do his job’ and give Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing, a constitutional duty of the Senate,” NextGen Climate said. Garland is expected to side with the administration’s climate rules if appointed to the court. The GOP has been blocking his nomination.
“Meanwhile, young voters in Nevada protested outside of Joe Heck’s office in Las Vegas to demand climate action,” the group said. “Heck has already publicly endorsed Donald Trump, highlighting that Heck puts corporate polluters ahead of Nevada voters.”
The Democratic draft platform supports a nationwide tax on carbon emissions, while taking steps to institute a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has led to the country becoming a top producer of oil and gas. The platform also calls for implementing a 100-percent renewable energy target.
Environmental groups have increased pressure on the Obama administration to extend its moratorium on coal mining on federal lands and ban the movement of Canadian tar sands oil into the United States via ship.
“Banning dangerous super tankers and barges in U.S. waters is the single best means we have to protect our coasts and our planet from the next generation of climate-wrecking tar sands oil. And President Obama has the authority to direct the U.S. Coast Guard and EPA to enact the ban right away — without waiting on Congress,” the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a message to supporters.
