#offshore drilling

It’s not too late to stand up against offshore drilling by making a public comment and contacting your representatives.

Trump’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is proposing to lease federal waters off of California’s entire coastline to oil companies looking to drill. Join us by using our voices to tell the federal government “no” to the proposed plan that would recklessly expand offshore drilling and introduce new threats to ocean health. 

Comments are being accepted by BOEM until tomorrow, Friday January 23rd at 8:59 pm PT/11:59 pm ET, so submit yours now!

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity filed an emergency lawsuit today against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in federal district court in Washington, D.C., to prevent him from convening the Endangered Species Committee, also known as the Extinction Committee, on March 31.

Burgum wants the committee to approve the extinction of the extremely endangered Rice’s whale and the killing of endangered sea turtles and sperm whales by overriding a National Marine Fisheries Service requirement for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry to drive ships at safe speeds in the eastern Gulf and monitor the location of whales to avoid strikes and deaths.

“Burgum’s extinction committee is immoral, illegal and unnecessary,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no emergency, no legal basis to convene the committee, and no legal way to approve the extinction of Rice’s whales. This sham is nothing more than Burgum posturing for Trump and saving the fossil fuel industry a few dollars by allowing its boats to drive faster and more recklessly.”

The Endangered Species Act’s Extinction Committee is very rarely convened because the law sets strict, narrow standards for its invocation. It was last convened in 1991 under George H.W. Bush.

The committee can only convene 1) in response to an application made within 90 days of the completion of a biological opinion, which 2) concludes that an endangered species’ existence is being “jeopardized” and there is no “reasonable and prudent alternative” to the action. It must 3) hold a public hearing, including witness testimony, and 4) be presided over by an administrative law judge. Burgum’s so-called “emergency” Extinction Committee meeting violates all these requirements.

Ten months ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion concluding that oil industry ship strikes were jeopardizing the existence of the extremely endangered Rice’s whale, which lives only in the Gulf of Mexico, and harming endangered sperm whales and sea turtles. This followed an earlier 2020 opinion also reaching the same conclusion.

The Rice’s whale population collapsed after the Deepwater Horizon spill and is today only at about 51 animals.

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden moved on Monday to block future oil and natural gas drilling and protect around 625 million acres of U.S. ocean, including the entire East Coast offshore as well as some areas off the West Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. “My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a  statement. “It is not worth the risks. … Now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”

Biden is doing this under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, making the move harder for President-elect Donald Trump to reverse. Revoking the action would require congressional approval. “Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations,” Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental nonprofit Oceana, said in a statement. Predictably, the oil and gas industry had a different take. Biden’s move was “significant and catastrophic,” said Ron Neal, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America Offshore Committee, an industry lobbying group.

And while Axios reports that most of the areas under the new protection “are locations that the oil and gas industry had not shown strong interest in for development,” the Trump team is still acting very exasperated about the whole affair.

Biden’s ban was “a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told media outlets. “Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill." "It's ridiculous,” Trump said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” on Monday. “I'll unban it immediately. I will unban it. I have the right to unban it immediately.” How he plans to “unban” this, though, is not yet known. The Biden administration has spent considerable time “Trump-proofing” its domestic accomplishments. This includes moving to push through aid for Ukraine before they fall under the incoming Trump administration’s discretion. 

Donald Trump's spokeswoman has said that President Joe Biden's move to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S coastal waters is "disgraceful."

"This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices," Karoline Leavitt wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.