Washington-The Byden administration has announced plans to drill oil and gas along the US coast, blocking the possibility of new leases in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, but new leases in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. May enable sale. Cook Inlet, Alaska.
The law requires the Home Office to issue plans for new oil and gas leasing in federal waters every five years. This new thing, which establishes a place where the government can sell oil and gas leases from 2022 to 2027, is at a difficult time for President Biden.
He wants to reduce drilling to combat climate change as gas prices rise, allowing Republican critics to blame his climate policy on pump pain. In fact, most energy experts say that soaring oil prices are the result of a pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has disrupted the global market. It takes years from the issuance of a drilling lease to the flow of gasoline to a gas station.
The proposed five-year plan offers several options, such as no lease sales at all. Another option is to have 10 potential sales in the western and central Gulf of Mexico and 1 potential sale in Cook Inlet in south-central Alaska. Drilling has been banned in the eastern Gulf of Mexico since 1995.
“From day one, President Biden and I have articulated our commitment to a transition to a clean energy economy,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Today, we offer Americans the opportunity to consider and provide their views on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing. It’s time for the public to consider our future.”
With the announcement of the plan, the Biden administration runs the risk of offending both the fossil fuel industry and environmental advocates.
Oil industry leaders, who argue that more drilling in the United States is needed to lower gas prices, have accused President Biden of limiting supply to the global market.
However, due to carbon emissions from oil, gas and coal climbs and the intensification of the climate crisis, environmental activists argue that Mr Biden must ban new drilling.
Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for the environmental group Earth justice, said: He called the new planning option of including lease sales a “climate leadership failure.”
The International Energy Agency said countries must discontinue approval of new coal mines and oil and gas fields to keep global warming at an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. This is a threshold that greatly increases the likelihood of catastrophic heat waves, droughts, floods, and widespread extinction. Since the Industrial Revolution, the earth has already heated an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.
As a candidate, Mr. Biden has promised to complete new drilling in public land and federal waters. Shortly after taking office, I imposed a temporary moratorium on the new lease, but a federal judge in Louisiana blocked that policy. The administration is appealing for that decision.
The government’s first and only offshore drilling auction in the Gulf of Mexico was overturned by another judge who said the government had not fully considered the effects of climate change. The administration has not appealed the ruling.
The Outer Continental Shelf Act mandates a five-year plan, and the current blueprint finaled under President Barack Obama expired on Thursday. President Donald J. Trump has proposed opening virtually all US waters to drilling, but the plan is finalized in the face of strong opposition from Florida Republicans concerned about the impact on tourism. Was not done.
Experts say Biden’s plan could be finalized later this year. The government will take public comments on the plan 90 days after it was published in the Federal Register, perhaps early next week.
Interior ministry officials said Plan 47, proposed by Mr. Trump, leases sales in all coastal areas of the country, including locations where excavation has never been done. Biden’s plan “has significantly narrowed the area under consideration for leasing to the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, where existing production and infrastructure exist,” he said in a statement.
The agency also noted that the potential lease sales area of the proposed plan is not always in the final version. However, areas that are not included, such as the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean, will not appear in the final measurement.
Mr. Biden’s plan can have political implications. West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III, who conducts swing votes in an evenly divided senator, urged the president to offer more drilling rights in the Gulf to mitigate high energy prices.
On Friday, Mr Manchin said in a statement that he was disappointed that the Biden administration included a non-lease option in its plans.
“Our leasing program is an important element of America’s energy security,” Manchin said. “I hope the government will finally unveil plans to expand domestic energy production.”
Mary Durbin, director of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Energy Institute, called the plan “another punch for consumers and businesses suffering from high energy prices and inflation.”
However, Arizona Democratic Party lawmaker Raul Griharva, who heads the House of Representatives Natural Resources Commission, is plagued by new leasing ideas, noting that oil and gas companies are leasing 8 million acres of undeveloped offshore waters. Said that it has been.
The new drilling program was so sensitive that Mr. Biden’s closest aide led internal negotiations on whether and where future drilling could be permitted.
Biden has promised to reduce US emissions by about 50% over the last decade, but lacks options for tackling climate change. Laws that enable significant emission reductions have come to a standstill, and on Thursday the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce climate pollution from power plants.