‘Stark Betrayal’: Biden Administration Floats New Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling

Late Friday, just before the start of the July 4 holiday weekend, the Biden administration published a draft proposal that could allow new oil and gas drilling in federal waters off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that environmentalists warned would further endanger marine life and exacerbate the climate crisis.

If implemented, the plan released by the Interior Department would permit up to 11 new oil lease sales over a five-year period, adding to the significant lease sales that have already taken place under the Biden administration despite the president’s campaign promise to ban all “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.”

The proposal in its current form would bar all new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Recent research estimates that fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters is driving roughly a quarter of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

“The new draft five-year leasing plan is a stark betrayal of President Biden’s climate promises and the communities who will suffer the brunt of this drilling,” said Collin Rees, the United States program manager at Oil Change International. “We can’t transition away from fossil fuels by locking in five more years of deadly extraction, and Biden can’t claim to care about environmental justice while forcing oil and gas projects on already burdened communities.”

On the Friday before Thanksgiving weekend, the Interior Department unveiled its proposed changes to the U.S. oil and gas leasing program. And on the Friday before Easter, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced it would restart oil and gas lease sales on public lands.

If administration officials were hoping to dampen backlash by dropping the new draft plan Friday evening, they were surely disappointed as leading climate organizations and Democratic lawmakers roundly panned the proposal, which came just a day after the U.S. Supreme Court sharply curtailed the federal government’s authority to regulate power-plant emissions.

Despite repeatedly promising to treat the climate crisis as an existential emergency, the Biden administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands during its first year than its predecessor.

Just this past week, the Washington Post notes, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management “netted $22 million by offering about 130,000 acres for drilling across seven states.” Environmental groups are taking legal action in an attempt to stop the administration from moving ahead with the sales.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and industry groups such as the National Ocean Industries Association welcomed the administration’s draft but urged Biden to expand drilling further.

“Our allies across the free world are in desperate need of American oil and gas,” declared Manchin, who has obstructed his party’s renewable energy proposals. “I am disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales is even an option on the table.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Jake Johnson.