February 28, 2022: Last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a historic ruling vacating the largest offshore drilling lease sale in U.S. history. Sierra Club and our partners— Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Earthjustice— sued the Biden administration for its faulty environmental review of the lease sale under the National Environmental Policy Act. The review irrationally concluded that a "no leasing" alternative would result in more greenhouse gas emissions than proceeding with leasing the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling and production activities. The court agreed with Plaintiffs that the agency's climate impact analysis was flawed, sending it back to the agency and vacating the November 17, 2021 lease sale.
Lease Sale 257 encompassed 80.8 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation's most biologically diverse ecosystems. The region sustains numerous threatened and endangered species, including five species of federally protected sea turtles and the critically endangered Rice's whale, a newly classified species totaling approximately 50 individuals that exclusively inhabit the Gulf. The region supports a robust coastal tourism and commercial fishing economy, and produces one-third of the country's domestic seafood supply. Despite its ecological and cultural significance, the Gulf and its surrounding communities have served as a sacrifice zone for the oil and gas industry, and for decades the U.S. Department of Interior has auctioned offshore leases and approved oil and gas drilling and exploration plans that heavily dot the Gulf's coastal and marine areas. This activity has come with a significant price, as the Gulf and its surrounding communities have endured the worst oil spill disaster in U.S. history, in addition to numerous ongoing spills that for years operators have been unable to cap. The region has also shouldered some of the harshest climate change impacts to date, including sea level rise and the intensification of hurricane category storms that pummel homes and coastal infrastructure year after year.
The District Court decision requires the agency to fix its flawed climate impact analysis that it must rely on in determining whether to proceed with oil and gas leasing and development on our public lands and waters. This victory forces the Biden Administration to take necessary steps in meeting its ambitious goals of tackling the climate crisis head-on.