US federal judge blocks offshore lease sale over impact on Rice’s whales

A federal judge has blocked an oil and gas lease sale in Gulf waters off the coast of Louisiana after finding that authorities did not take into account the impact of new offshore drilling on the highly endangered Rice’s whale.

The ruling from a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will require the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) to conduct additional environmental reviews before the lease sale proceeds. As it stands, the current lease sale is not canceled but will need more work before it goes ahead.

The main issue is the habitat of the Rice’s whales, which live in Gulf waters and nowhere else and were discovered to be a distinct species only recently. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association estimates that there could be only 51 such whales left in the wild.

This particular species of whale is particularly vulnerable to being struck by boats because it sleeps near the water’s surface, making it exceptionally hard to spot. Last month, BOEM said no to recommendations that ships slow down in areas where the whales are known to live and keep 500 meters away from any whale that might be a Rice’s whale.

The court also ruled that BOEM did not adequately take into account the impact of greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the new oil and gas work in the Gulf of Mexico.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by several environmental organisations – Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club.

The environmental groups have also challenged Gulf lease sale 261, which took place in December 2023, on the same grounds. So far, no decision has been made regarding that sale.

Scott Lauermann, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, said that the blocking of the lease sale was “yet another example of activists weaponizing the National Environmental Policy Act process in the courts to block critical access for exploration, underscoring how permitting reform is essential to ensuring access to affordable, reliable energy.”

The Biden administration generally looked to limit offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters, especially during his last month in office when an executive order was issued banning drilling in most federal waters.

President Donald Trump, however, is doing everything in his power to reverse those decisions and is promising to “unleash American energy”, mostly through oil and gas.

The Gulf of Mexico is the focus of those policies since around 97% of all offshore oil and gas production comes from there.