The Biden administration accepted close to $190 million in bids from an offshore gas and oil lease sale on September 14, following an 18-month delay imposed by the administration. The sale was held close to a year ago, according to the Associated Press, but was initially rejected by a federal judge.
Cole Ramsey, the vice president of upstream policy for the American Petroleum Institute, told AP News, “We are pleased that the Department of the Interior has finally offered the first offshore leases of this administration, but it is disappointing that it took 19 months and an act of Congress to get us to this point.”
The decision was made in accordance with the new climate bill, which set a 30-day deadline for accepting bids. Under the new climate bill, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) must also reschedule three sales that the Biden administration put on hold. The first of these sales will be on December 31. The BOEM accepted a total of 307 bids, equalling almost $189.9 million.
United States Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was behind adding provisions for the lease sale to the law, the Associated Press reported. Manchin told AP News, “Our federal oil and gas leasing programs are critical to American energy security, and these offshore leases will provide the market signals necessary to help ease the pain Americans are feeling from record inflation and high energy prices.”
The director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Miyoko Sakashita, shared disappointment in the decision. “Congress just gave the greenlight to a lease sale that was found unlawful. That’s a serious blow to our climate and Gulf ecosystems, which have already suffered so much from oil industry pollution,” Sakashita told AP News.
The CBD fears that offshore fracking and drilling may increase as a result of offshore lease sales and, on September 14, asked the Environmental Protection Agency to keep companies from releasing fracking waste into the ocean, AP News reported.
Erik Milito, the President of the National Ocean Industries Association, argued, however, that United States offshore gas and oil are produced with strict controls that would prevent such things from happening. “This is a complete misunderstanding of offshore production processes and does not reflect the actual science and engineering behind how U.S. offshore oil and gas is actually produced,” Milito told AP News. “Performance-based limits provide strict controls on the fluids that are discharged and ensure a sound, risk-based approach to protecting the environment.”
Leases from the recent sale come with stipulations designed to protect the environment and clean resources, according to the BOEM. In a news release, the BOEM said, “Leases resulting from this sale include stipulations to protect biologically sensitive resources, mitigate potential adverse effects on protected species, and avoid potential ocean user conflicts.”
A previous lease sale held in November of 2020 brought in around $120.9 million in bids.