The American Petroleum Institute is leading a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s indefinite pause on oil and natural gas leasing in federal lands and waters. The suit was filed on Monday.
API and 11 other oil industry trade groups argue the Interior Department failed to satisfy procedural requirements and ignored congressional mandates for holding lease sales.
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“The law is clear: the department must hold lease sales and provide a justification for significant policy changes,” said Paul Afonso, API’s senior vice president and chief legal officer. “They have yet to meet these requirements in the eight months since instituting a federal leasing pause, which continues to create uncertainty for U.S. natural gas and oil producers.”
The groups, which filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, say the Mineral Leasing Act requires quarterly onshore lease sales, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act directs the government to pursue “expeditious” development of energy resources offshore.
A Louisiana-based federal district judge already ruled against President Joe Biden in June, granting a preliminary nationwide injunction to end the leasing pause to more than a dozen oil and gas producing states that sued.
Louisiana and other Gulf states filed a motion last week to Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to compel compliance with his ruling that Biden’s leasing pause is illegal and must end.
But the Interior Department has not resumed lease sales.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said Interior “is complying with the court order,” but “it’s not a switch you can turn on,” a response that has drawn objections from members of both parties, who are prodding the Biden administration to resume oil and gas lease sales.
Biden signed an executive order in January imposing an indefinite pause on issuing new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, a step toward fulfilling a major campaign promise as part of his aggressive agenda to address climate change.
The pause was met with fierce backlash from the fossil fuel industry and states, including Democratic-led ones, that depend on oil and gas production revenue to fund their budgets.
It has not stopped companies from obtaining permits to drill and develop oil and gas on existing leases. Interior Department officials have stressed that U.S. companies continue to develop oil and gas on federal lands during the pause on new leasing and that states and the federal government are not losing significant amounts of revenue.
Interior continues approving permits to drill for oil and gas on existing public lands leases at the highest rate since George W. Bush’s administration.
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The department is expected to release a report later this summer on whether it intends to make the indefinite pause on oil and gas leasing permanent or propose reforms to raise costs and impose stricter regulation on oil and gas development on public lands and waters instead.
