Biden administration pausing new oil and gas leases amid legal battle
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A pumpjack (L), which operates in tandem with another (R), stands still in Inglewood Oilfield, Los Angeles on January 28, 2022.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
After a Louisiana earthquake, the Biden administration delayed decisions regarding new oil and natural gas permits and leases. federal judge blocked officialsIn order to make rules regarding polluting industries, you should use more accurate climate change cost estimates.
U.S. district Judge James Cain’s February 11 ruling on leasing was an unfortunate result. Cain represented a number of GOP-led States and claimed that Biden’s efforts to raise climate change costs would cause energy prices to rise and reduce state revenues.
There have been delays and uncertainties in the decisions of at least four federal departments that used higher greenhouse gas emission cost estimates to inform their decisions. This included plans for limiting methane from natural gas drilling, and a grant program supporting transit projects. The ruling also continues the contentious legal fight that has hindered Biden’s efforts to tackle climate change.
Unintended but significant consequences of this ruling include the government’s suspension of new oil-and gas leases and permits for drilling on federal lands. Now, lease sales to states in the U.S. West (including Montana and Wyoming) are delayed.
“Agencies are experiencing significant delays and wastes of resources as they scramble to rehash economic and environmental analyses prepared in connection with a broad array of government actions,” the Department of Justice wrote in a legal filing on Saturday.
The department stated that “work surrounding public-facing rules and grants, leases and permits, as well as other projects, has been delayed or stopped entirely so agencies can evaluate whether and how to proceed.”
Pause on leases or permits
On his first day in office, Biden restored the climate cost estimate to roughly $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, following the Trump administration decision to cut the number to roughly $7 or less per ton and account only for the impacts in the U.S. rather than across the world.
The estimate of the “social cost” of carbon accounts for events like droughts, wildfires and severe storms which have become more intense and frequent due to climate change.
Cain explained in his ordonnance that such a measure would artificially raise the costs of oil and natural gas leases sales. This would have a direct impact on states which receive bids for energy production and royalties.
A judge also ruled that the president did not have the power to change the figure by executive order. He also cited federal law as a violation, implementing new rules and not allowing public comment.
Cain stated that “the President is unable to promulgate fundamentally transformational legislative rules in areas with great political, socio-economic importance.” wrote in the injunction.
Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, called Cain’s ruling “legally incoherent,” arguing that it’s put federal agencies in a Catch-22 as they attempt to assess the cost of climate change in major decisions.
Sarinsky explained that agencies have a good deal of legal precedent to take into account climate science. They are not allowed to use these climate estimations because of this injunction.
Michael Freeman, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, said Cain’s ruling was “deeply flawed and contained numerous legal and factual errors,” and that the government’s decision to delay new leases was unintended fallout.
Freeman stated that “Louisiana and the oil-and-gas industry have fallen over themselves trying to get the federal government to hurry full speed ahead irresponsibly oil and gaz development.”
Freeman stated that “Ultimately, the only thing Louisiana and industry want is for the federal governments to ignore climate change.” The law does not allow the government to do this.
Dominic Mancini is the deputy administrator of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of Office of Management and Budget. He stated that many agencies have been experiencing delays due to this ruling.
For example, Transportation Department officials are concerned about delays to federal grants for transit and rail projects. This could lead to delays that can last months.
Mancini explained that this order will not only delay the Energy Department’s court-ordered plan, Mancini claimed, to issue energy conservation standard for manufactured housing and a Bureau of Land Management plan, to reduce natural gaz waste on federal lands.
Environmentalists and legal experts have sharply condemned Cain’s ruling on the real cost of climate change and pointed to the irony of the delayed fossil fuel extraction as a result of the order.
Brett Hartl (the Center for Biological Diversity’s director of government affairs) stated that the delay in leasing will probably not exceed two months. New drilling permits would be unnecessary and unrelated to the country’s climate mitigation goals.
Hartl explained that there is a small amount of irony in the decision of the judge, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that many regulations and attempts to tackle the climate crisis are being undermined by the judge.
Public drilling generates millions of dollars of revenue, and about 25% of U.S. greenhouse gases emissions. Biden, despite a campaign pledge to cease drilling has actually approved more drilling permits per month on public lands than Donald Trump did in his first three years as president.
In his first year of presidency Biden signed an executive order directing the Interior secretary to halt new leases and begin a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development. But 13 GOP state attorneys general sued and a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the order.
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