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President Biden’s administration opened the door on Friday to more offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters over the next five years, setting a course for future U.S. fossil fuel production just a day after suffering a major climate challenge at the Supreme Court.
The proposed offshore drilling program between 2023 and 2028 would ban exploration off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. But leaving open the possibility of new drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, the announcement fell short of Biden’s campaign pledge to permanently end federal fossil fuel leasing.
The plan moves the country away from its commitment to halve the nation’s planet-warming pollution by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and help prevent even worse fires, storms and droughts caused by rising temperatures. Biden’s climate agenda now depends on whether Democrats can pass a reconciliation package in the Senate that includes sound environmental policies.
“The Supreme Court just put a lead ball around his ankle in terms of his executive branch,” said John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “If you don’t get reconciliation, along with the restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court, I think there’s no way you’re going to get the 50 percent reduction by the end of the decade.”
But the offshore plan, along with other events this week, highlights political and legal limitations in the United States to address global warming and carries risks for Democrats as Americans experience record gasoline prices ahead of November’s midterm elections and as many on the left demand tighter limits on fossil fuels.
On Thursday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to force energy providers to abandon burning coal. And Biden’s Interior Department was forced by a lower court order to lease acreage in the western United States this week for onshore drilling.
The consequences of warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels by continuing to burn oil and other fossil fuels are huge for humanity: If left unchecked, global warming could hamper the fight against hunger , poverty and disease worldwide. The International Energy Agency has called for a freeze on investment in new fossil fuel supplies to achieve this goal.
“We will slow down the progress we could otherwise make,” said Brian O’Neill, chief scientist at the Joint Institute for Global Change Research and lead author of a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on impacts and vulnerability.
The Interior Department is considering 10 potential auctions in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Interior Minister Deb Haaland emphasized that the plan has not been finalized and that her department is considering the option of no lease sales at all. The plan narrows the areas considered for oil and gas leasing from a plan proposed under President Donald Trump in 2018.
“The proposed program is not a decision to issue specific leases or to permit drilling or development,” Haaland said in a statement. “From day one, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transitioning to a clean energy economy.
During his bid for the White House, Biden promised to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters. “No more drilling on federal lands, period,” he told a campaign rally in New Hampshire. “Dot, dot, dot.”
There is growing optimism in the Senate that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (DW.Va.), who effectively shut down negotiations on a previous iteration of a massive package, can strike a deal . In recent days, Democratic leaders have agreed on a proposal to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, a policy that would be part of a broader economic package.
Since December, when Manchin blocked Biden’s original Build Back Better proposal, the senator has expressed reservations about the cost of any potential package, warning of a rising national debt and skyrocketing inflation. But with only 50 seats in the Senate, the party needs Manchin’s vote to pass any legislation. As a result, party leaders backed down and removed many of their domestic priorities from the proposed package.
However, energy policy is still expected to remain at the center of the potential bill, as Manchin has long called for protecting the United States’ energy security and increasing its energy independence from foreign nations. But aides say negotiations on what the energy and climate components of the deal will look like are still ongoing, and final decisions are likely weeks away.
In a statement Friday, Manchin said he was “pleased” the plan came through, though he was “disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales are even an option on the table.”
“Our leasing programs are a critical component of American energy security,” Manchin said. “I am hopeful that the administration will ultimately greenlight a plan that will expand domestic energy production, done in the cleanest way possible, while taking the necessary steps to get our offshore leasing program back on track.” to provide the necessary market signals to provide price relief for every American.”
Inside the administration, Biden officials said the court’s decision was not a surprise and that they had largely expected to lose the case. But even so, in the hours since the decision was released, senior officials remain shocked and demoralized as they come to terms with the limits on their ability to fight climate change, officials said. Administration officials are beginning to chart the next steps for how to move forward with Biden’s climate agenda, they said, but acknowledged there is a sense of gloom that is widespread in climate policy offices.
Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser, who crafted the EPA rule at the center of the Supreme Court case, has stressed in recent days that the administration is focused on finding alternative ways, particularly through the Defense Production Act, to continue to achieve its climate goals.
“His use of the Defense Production Act to speed up all of this domestic production will really, I think, be one of the ways that this president lets people know that he’s going to continue to drive the change that’s needed,” McCarthy said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, citing Biden’s push to make rare earth minerals available for the electric vehicle market.
But Biden’s efforts to curb fossil fuel drilling have met with serious legal and political setbacks.
Soon after taking office, he followed through with an executive order instructing Interior to halt all new sales of leases on public lands and waters while it reviewed how to fix the program. A federal judge in Louisiana last year blocked that break. And Biden has faced criticism for the lease from Manchin, along with many Republicans.
Federal law requires the Interior Department to publish a plan for new offshore oil and gas sales every five years, but the law gives the administration wide discretion to decide where and whether to allow new drilling.
“It is critical to recognize that the Biden administration has the discretion to propose a five-year leasing program that does not provide for any new lease sales,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice. an environmental law firm.
Republican lawmakers and oil industry lobbyists have called on the administration to increase America’s fossil fuel production to help curb record gas station prices. The national average for a gallon of gasoline hit $4.84 on Friday, according to AAA, an increase of more than 50 percent this year.
“If the administration is serious about reducing pump prices, they should expand access to oil and natural gas on federal lands, not kill it,” Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the top Senate Republican on energy and natural resources Commission on Resources said in a recent statement.
It takes about five to 10 years for a new offshore lease to start producing oil, according to the Interior Department. That means the proposal released Friday won’t have an immediate impact on current pump prices — though it could have significant implications for the United States’ ability to meet its pledge to cut emissions by 2030.
Officials in the Biden administration have privately acknowledged that rising fuel prices could threaten Democrats’ chances in Congress in November’s midterm elections. They have taken several steps to lower gas prices that are anathema to climate activists, such as authorizing a historically large release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The western and central Gulf of Mexico makes up the heart of America’s offshore energy business, where about 1.7 million barrels of oil a day are produced mainly off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and sent to refineries to be turned into gasoline , jet fuel and plastics. About one-seventh of all domestic crude oil produced falls into the Persian Gulf.
Energy companies have worked for years to drill for oil and gas far beyond the Persian Gulf, off the East and West coasts. But those hopes were dashed in 2010 when a rig drilling an offshore exploratory well exploded, killing 11 crew members, causing the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed hundreds of thousands of birds, uncorked millions of barrels of oil in the ocean and hampered efforts to expand offshore oil exploration in the United States.
After the spill, President Barack Obama halted plans to expand drilling to parts of the eastern gulf, near Florida, as well as…
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