The State of Louisiana, Chevron USA Inc. and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have filed a legal challenge to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Final Notice of Sale for Lease Sale 261 announced last week , complaining about “severe restrictions on oil and natural gas vessel traffic” and “significantly reduced surface area,” the API said in a statement.
According to the filing in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana dated Aug. 24, the “BOEM changed the rules and dramatically altered the terms of Lease Sale 261″ in its Final Notice of Sale and Registration of decision Specifically, the BOEM imposed a new lease stipulation “containing onerous operating restrictions across a newly defined and greatly expanded “Rice Whale Expanded Area” that doubled the size of the former area of the whale of rice and spread it over the entire stretch of the gulf.” , the file said. In addition, BOEM “removed from Lease Sale 261 all acreage within this expanded area,” the filing continues.
The filing states that BOEM’s “last-minute changes are several times unlawful” because the new stipulation and acreage withdrawal contravene “the letter and spirit of the congressional order in the Reduction Act inflation, which explicitly mandated that BOEM conduct the sale of lease 261 in accordance with the Five-Year Plan for Oil and Gas Leasing previously adopted by BOEM, so as not to introduce substantial new conditions and complications, let alone withdraw millions of acres, at the last minute”.
Additionally, the challenged provisions also “violate the procedural requirements and implementing regulations of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which direct BOEM to disclose the terms of the lease sale in the proposed notice of sale, without radically modifying them in the final notice”. the file alleges.
Likewise, the contested provisions “contrary to the Administrative Procedure Law, since they constitute a totally arbitrary and capricious departure from BOEM’s previous position without an adequate explanation of the change, and otherwise exceed BOEM’s statutory and regulatory powers”. according to the file.
The plaintiffs ask the court to “declare the challenged provisions to be unlawful and vacate only those aspects of the proposed notice of sale and record of decision, while otherwise leaving the sale intact because it will proceed under the instructions of Congress”. The court would also have to declare the challenged provisions illegal before proceeding with the sale and compel BOEM to complete the sale by Sept. 27 without the said provisions, according to the filing.
“Today we are taking action to challenge the Department of the Interior’s unjustified actions to further restrict access to American energy in the Gulf of Mexico,” said API Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers in the statement. “Despite Congress’ clear intent in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration has announced a ‘name-only lease sale’ that removes approximately 6 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico from sale and adds new and unjustified restrictions on oil and natural gas vessels operating in this area, ignoring other vessel traffic. Together with the State of Louisiana and Chevron USA Inc., we intend to use all legal tools to our readiness to challenge these actions.”
“Once again, Joe Biden is illegally trying to kill both Louisiana jobs and affordable energy for all Americans,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. “We’re taking the president back to court, where we trust that the rule of law will be followed and that Biden’s bureaucrats will be defeated.”
Lease Sale 261 will offer approximately 12,395 blocks on approximately 67 million acres on the US Outer Continental Shelf in the western, central and eastern planning areas of the Gulf of Mexico, according to an earlier release from BOEM.
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