<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656527553229,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656527553229,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_56527400", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1041132"} }); ","_id":"00000181-b0bc-df08-a3b3-fabd1b560000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video Embed
The Interior Department is preparing to set the course of U.S. offshore oil and gas leasing for the next five years with a decision that will show whether President Joe Biden’s promise to end offshore drilling is still within reach.
The agency intends to issue a belated five-year offshore leasing program proposal Thursday when the current program expires, Secretary Deb Haaland testified in May. The plan will lay out when and where the department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management suggests leasing federal plots in a given year. With the proposed program, the administration will effectively have to pick sides between liberal environmentalist groups that want to see the program end and others, including centrist Democrats, who insist that more leasing is imperative to ensure U.S. energy security and to reduce energy prices.
DAILY ON ENERGY: Q&A WITH TOP RUSSIA OIL PRICE CAP PROPONENT SIMON JOHNSON
The proposed program comes at a time of volatility for the administration, which is suffering politically under the weight of high inflation while struggling to please environmentalist constituencies who believe President Joe Biden has underdelivered on his agenda for addressing climate change.
Biden ran on ambitious green policies that envisioned restrictions on oil and gas development on federal lands. As a candidate, he told voters that “there will be no offshore drilling” if he were elected, a guarantee that has gone unfulfilled.
But amid a global energy crisis and calls to increase domestic production, the administration is facing growing pressure from a coalition of Republicans, industry officials, and even centrist Democrats who have pressed Biden to move more quickly to propose a new offshore program that authorizes new oil and gas lease sales.
Green groups and some congressional Democrats have lobbied the administration to propose a five-year program that excludes lease sales altogether in order to avoid additional greenhouse gas emissions and to abate climate change.
By comparison, the current five-year plan, which was approved during the Obama administration, provided for 11 potential offshore lease sales between 2017 and 2022 — 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Alaska.
“We know that offshore drilling is inherently a risk-reward proposition, with our coastal communities shouldering the risk and oil companies reaping the rewards,” 10 Democratic senators wrote to Haaland, asking her to help deliver on Biden’s campaign promises and ensure no new leases are included.
Other Democrats, however, have urged Biden and his administration to finalize a five-year program quickly, arguing that more oil and gas development in the U.S. is necessary to increase supply to the global marketplace and to bring down energy costs.
Republicans and the oil and gas industry have made similar arguments. Industry groups in particular have insisted their members need the longer-term certainty of lease sales.
“The experts tell us that we’re going to be using oil and gas for decades to come,” a senior industry official told the Washington Examiner. “And so, if we don’t invest in it, others will, and they will take our energy security from us.”
Biden’s attempts to scale back new leasing have so far been limited. Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee, enjoined Biden’s order pausing leasing on federal lands last summer, ruling that federal law doesn’t provide agencies discretion to pause lease sales on eligible lands.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Biden administration is currently appealing that ruling.
Since Doughty’s injunction, BOEM and the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the leasing of federal lands, have scheduled and carried out oil and gas lease sales.
The administration carried out one offshore lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico in November, although that sale was thrown out by a different federal judge after environmental groups sued.
Bids also open on Thursday for federal acreage across multiple Western states.
