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Senate liberals are squaring up against their fellow Democrats and discouraging the Biden administration from enabling new oil and gas development with its upcoming five-year offshore leasing proposal.
Ten Democratic senators asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who said the department intends to propose a belated five-year plan by Thursday, not to include any new oil and gas lease sales in the proposed program.
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“We know that offshore drilling is inherently a risk-reward proposition, with our coastal communities shouldering the risk and oil companies reaping the rewards,” the senators, who all represent coastal states, wrote to Haaland in a letter circulated Tuesday. “History shows us that it is not a question of if an oil spill occurs, but when.”
They went on to request that Haaland uphold President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to end offshore drilling and “include no new lease sales” in the next five-year program.
A five-year program with no new leasing would not necessarily end offshore drilling, as there would still be active leases and drilling permits in operation.
The signatories were led by Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ) and include Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (MA), Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR), and Sen. Alex Padilla (CA).
The Democrats’ letter pits them against several of their colleagues, who have asked the Biden administration to move more quickly to authorize the next-five year program and carry out lease sales so that U.S. producers can increase their share of the oil and gas market and displace dirtier product from nations like Russia.
Sens. Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, John Hickenlooper, and Mark Kelly have all gone on record supporting a new five-year program with lease sales.
Kelly and Manchin sent a letter to Biden in March and argued that leasing is needed to “enable the United States to become more energy independent to meet emerging geopolitical threats.”
Four Texas Democrats also told Biden in May that the U.S. “can and should be doing more to meet the global energy demand” and asked that his administration publish a new five-year program.
The Democrats lobbying Haaland said more offshore leases “will do nothing to lower current gas prices” because they take several years to be developed.
The current five-year program expires on Thursday, and the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is well behind schedule in replacing it. The earliest a program could be finalized is likely late fall.
Environmentalists had already been lobbying the administration to propose a sale-less program, arguing that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act does not require the provision of lease sales.
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Biden’s attempt to pause all federal leasing on and offshore, which he ordered shortly after taking office, was put to a stop last summer by a federal judge in Louisiana who stayed the order and ruled federal law requires the Interior to hold lease sales.
The administration has since carried out one offshore lease sale, although that sale was thrown out by a different federal judge.
The Interior canceled the three remaining lease sales provided for in the current five-year program.
