House Democrats ask DC Circuit to vacate Interior's latest offshore lease sale

Three top Democrats in the US House of Representatives have asked a federal court to vacate the Interior Department's latest oil and gas lease sale, which opened some 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico.

The suit to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit argues Interior's Nov. 17 Lease Sale 257 violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. It said Interior should have performed a greenhouse gas emissions analysis.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, energy subcommittee Chairman Alan Lowenthal of California, and water subcommittee Chairman Jared Huffman of California filed the suit Dec. 3.

"As members of Congress with oversight responsibility, [we] are deeply troubled by [the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's] determination to proceed with Lease Sale 257 despite its own findings that the largest lease sale in history has not had an adequate environmental review," the filing said.

The amicus brief was filed in support of a lawsuit brought by environmental groups challenging Interior's leasing policy and Lease Sale 257.

The Nov. 17 lease sale — the first federal auction under the Biden administration — generated nearly $192 million in high bids placed on 307 blocks. A total of 316 bids were placed, signifying there was not a lot of competition for acreage.

ExxonMobil bid for about 100 shallow-water blocks along the Texas coast as part of its carbon capture and storage plans. It has proposed a massive offshore CCS project that aims to capture 50 million mt/year of CO2 by 2030 and twice that amount by 2040.

After the lease sale, BOEM said that in the future it will "use updated greenhouse gas emission models to take substitution impacts and foreign oil consumption into account, resulting in the most robust projections ever of the climate impacts of offshore lease sales."

It also plans to analyze the "social cost of carbon to better understand the true impacts of fossil fuel leasing decisions."