Biden Administration's New Offshore Drilling Plan Decried as 'Climate Nightmare'

Climate and environmental defenders on Thursday condemned the Biden administration's imminent plan to sell offshore oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years.

Bloomberg reported Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau told a Senate panel on Thursday that the Biden administration's five-year offshore drilling rights plan will be released on Friday. Beaudreau said the plan was "definitely informed" by the Inflation Reduction Actction Act, which–while allocating hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy investments—mandates fossil fuel drilling, a move made to gain the support of corporate Democrats including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

"The only way to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis is by stopping new fossil fuel projects."

The previous drilling plan expired last year. The new one will include details regarding drilling rights in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Congress will have 60 days to review the proposal.

"The only way to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis is by stopping new fossil fuel projects. The Biden administration knows this, and yet is making the outlandish and irresponsible decision to increase oil production for decades to come," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch—which warned the drilling plan would be a "climate nightmare"—said in a statement.

"This decision is yet another reminder that thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin, the Inflation Reduction Act requires oil and gas drilling on public lands in order to develop clean energy sources like wind and solar," she added. "This short-sighted political dealmaking will continue to have grave consequences."

Biden was praised by green campaigners earlier this month for canceling existing oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and for banning drilling on 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve.

However, the president—who campaigned on a pledge to phase out fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters—has been criticized for approving new drilling permits at a faster rate than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, and for approving major fossil fuel infrastructure including the Willow Project in Alaska, the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia, and for green-lighting liquefied natural gas export terminals in Alaska and along the Gulf of Mexico.

Numerous green groups also sued the U.S. Interior Department earlier this year over its plan to offer more than 73 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico in a lease sale.

"Approving new offshore drilling is an unconscionable betrayal of future generations who will be forced to live through an intensifying planetary emergency, and will pose direct and severe threats to healthy oceans and marine life," said Hauter.

"President Biden says that climate change is an existential threat," she added. "Unfortunately, this decision is yet another sign that his administration is not willing to take actions that would match that rhetoric."

Last week, the Biden administration and green groups said they would appeal a Louisiana federal judge's ruling blocking the administration from exempting 6 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico from a drilling lease sale initially scheduled for Wednesday but postponed by the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management after the judge's decision.