By Thomas Catenacci
The Biden administration quietly acknowledged in a court filing earlier this week that it won’t issue a final decision on future offshore oil and gas leasing until the end of 2023.
The Biden administration has stated that it will not make a final decision on offshore oil and gas leasing until the end of 2023. [emphasis, links added]
Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys wrote in the briefing filed late Monday evening that the Interior Department (DOI) won’t be able to publish its highly-anticipated five-year offshore oil and gas leasing plan for at least another nine months.
The filing came in response to an ongoing lawsuit from fossil fuel industry groups led by the American Petroleum Institute (API), challenging the agency’s delay in issuing the plan.
“Interior is proceeding expeditiously to approve the next Five-Year Program in December 2023, only three months after API’s requested date,” the filing stated. “API has not provided compelling reasons why the Court should accelerate Interior’s timeline.”
Under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the federal government is required to issue plans every five years laying out prospective oil and gas lease sales. The most recent plan, which was implemented in 2017, expired in June.
On July 1, the DOI published a proposal for the five-year plan, which laid out multiple options for leasing between 2023 and 2028.
The plan included an option with no lease sales during the time span and a maximum option of 11 lease sales.
The plan ruled out any lease sales in the Atlantic or Pacific, mainly proposing Gulf of Mexico sales.
The delay in issuing a finalized plan represented a departure from the precedent set by both Republican and Democratic administrations, which historically have finalized replacements immediately after plans expired.
The option to hold no lease sales over the course of five years also represented an unprecedented departure.
The most recent two plans, both formulated under the Obama administration, include more than 10 offshore oil and gas lease sales each.
The Trump administration sought to hold a total of 47 lease sales across the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and off Alaska’s coasts between 2022 and 2027.
“The continued, prolonged, and unprecedented delay of the U.S. offshore oil and gas leasing program is injecting substantial and unnecessary uncertainty into the investment outlook for U.S. energy and national security,” said National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) president Erik Milito.
“The U.S. offshore region competes with other offshore regions throughout the world for investment in energy-producing projects.”
“Historically, the U.S. has been able to compete effectively under its statutory and regulatory framework,” Milito added. “However, as certainty and predictability have continued to erode as a result of stifling energy policy decisions out of Washington, investment dollars may begin to flow to other producing regions.”
NOIA, which represents both offshore fossil fuel and wind producers, was among the groups to sue the DOI over its delays in issuing a finalized plan.
NOIA and API issued a report last year showing that failure to hold more lease sales over the next five years would have a negative impact on jobs, gross domestic product, and domestic oil production.
“Beyond its legal requirement, the prompt finalization of an offshore oil and gas leasing program is critical to meeting fundamental energy realities and ensuring Americans have affordable supplies of energy for decades to come,” Milito continued.
This should be t used next year against Bidden as well as East Palestine/Ukraine and the rest of Biden’s acts of Treason against the American People
the policies of illegitimate biden are now on a course to destroy the economic base of this country.
biden is a complete failure
Got anything to say about the most recent jobs report? 311,000 new jobs added in February. Or about the fact that the US is now one of the worlds top energy exporters?
Probably not. Maybe you can just hit ’em with your FALSE NEWS or DISMISSED rubber stamps.
“New” jobs, not quite. We still have a labor shortage that’s hurting the economy.
We blew up a pipeline and destroyed European energy, and are now gouging Germany and others while we pushed Russia to sell MORE fossil fuels to a growing axis of opposition that includes Russia, China, and India…you know, about half the people on the planet.
As for spin, Biden has lied, pooped himself, and mumbled his way through countless blunders and embarrassments.
What he says means nothing.
And greg, the American manufacturing base and economy IS growing…because of people like me and millions of others doing it.
Not Biden. That government parasite doesn’t dare take credit for the hard work and innovation that we businessowners are engaged in now, rebuilding after they tried to kill us with a virus and fake vaccine.
22 consecutive months of declining wages.
Yes. We’re living in 1984, where the totalitarian regime in America merely states the opposite of what’s true.
Yup Dow is down 4% in 1 week, Bank stocks tanking, and SVB failed and in the hands of FDIC.
Export our NG to EU for top dollar and raise our bills 25% Because Biden is the pipeline bomber.
Oh and we were advised by the Resident his doctors had to take off the top of his head a couple of times to see if he had a brain.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1634607932166864896?t=DfGOde7W1z4e0exTIkhtZA&s=19
Meanwhile, the unadjusted jobs data on a rolling twelve month basis shows a steady and consistent downward trend in jobs created(over twelve months).
For the last twelve months we have had 2.5% job growth, down from 4.95% job growth, on an annual basis.
And for two of the last three months, excluding their magical seasonal adjustments we have lost jobs.
Over those three months, we have shed 1.4 million jobs.
As for the 2023 outlook;
If a company replaces a FT worker with a PT worker they will save about $13K per year. This is a no brainer for any business.
Layoffs are rising and will continue to perpetuate a decline in full time employment. Creating part time jobs and calling it job growth harkens back to the obama regime. History repeating itself.
Yeah, they are mostly “service jobs”, low paying and without benefits. The labor participation rate still sucks, just like this entire regime.
You don’t have much use for those struggling to support themselves and their families with low-paying jobs, do you?
You demean them while they struggle, curse them if they demand higher minimum wages, and demonize them if they try to unionize. When they can’t find any jobs, you call them parasites and deplore the government for providing them with any assistance. You do, however, insist that they bear as many additional children as possible, whether they want to or not, because you need an endless supply of downtrodden, low paid workers to fill the jobs you declare worthless.
You adore billionaires who worship money and embrace the principle that greed is good. You’ll cast aside democracy in favor of rule by bloviating authoritarian mob leaders, call true patriots dying to defend their homeland Nazis, and ignore the teaching of Christ that you deem to be socialist, while imagining yourselves to be true Christians.
You think anyone who disagrees is evil or brainwashed, after having given your own minds over to lying propagandists who have filled your heads with hateful garbage and unAmerican nonsense.
Billionaires support Democrats, and give to their campaigns at a much, much higher rate than the GOP.
Democrats: the party of crony capitalism and corporate fascism.
At what point to you either: a) stop saying this literal inversion of reality because you have a conscience, or b) get committed for being a raving mad nutjob.
Biden got about Six Billion dollars to be installed on the heels of a released pandemic…and they still had to rig the election.
From there, the companies investing in mostly Democrats and some GOP have been making Trillions from their unholy investment.
Funny how people like you only talk about Christ when you think Christ would tell normal Americans to stand down and let demonic bastards like you just do whatever you want.
You people are failing. You now it. We know it.
You’re on the wrong side of this, greg.
Biden didn’t get Six Billion dollars.
Biden’s cash advantage over Trump helped him pepper swing states with far more campaign ads. Biden also received more help from super PACs and “dark money” groups.
estimated 14.4 billion on 2020 election. Both pres and congress.
He had that, and more in-kind. But the estimated amount given by banks, tech, and pharma was six billion.
Of course you don’t hear about that. You on the Left only talk about money when you lose, about how the winner simply had more money.
(Note: the winner ALWAYS has more money, except for Trump who had half of what Hillary had. Oops).
The media will never talk about Biden’s donations, and the articles about how much that was were scrubbed from the internet long ago.
Its simple Democrats do not reward struggle, they reward the lazy and stupid.
Enacting policies that cause employers to keep people part time so they dont have to provide health insurance.
Call for Equity and diversity not those best qualified and when quotas cant be filled lower the standards.
The whole Feminist garbage was to double tax a family, While lowering wages making it impossible for a mother wife career, go work for some awful boss while those that dont love your children raise them in daycare, then go to latch key.
Now erasing the female with transgender “rights” the first lady giving away a females award to a man on the entire planet she/they could not find a woman that better deserved the award.
They are all seriously mentally ill along with those that go along trying to normalize it, and shove it on to the kids.
Think back just 5 to 10 years ago would you have thought this OK? You have been brainwashed.
Far more than you do, because I support leadership that can provide an economy that provides something more that service jobs. I don’t think those low-paying jobs that Obama and idiot Biden create can support families. Trump created higher-paying job. He brought back manufacturing jobs, but idiot Biden sheds them, as Obama did.
I also don’t support, as you obviously do, flooding the job market with millions of illegal immigrants that lowers wages. You would do well to clean up your own morals before you accuse others of “not caring”. You only care about watching Democrats acquire total power, not anything that benefits the nation and citizens.
I didn’t demean anything but idiot Biden’s pathetic record. It’s not the worker’s fault that idiot Biden destroys good paying jobs and replaces them with minimum wage jobs.
A perfect example fo greed is idiot Biden. He is a multi-millionaire with untold millions gained from corruption and influence peddling yet he draws his salary and collects Social Security from a system in distress. That’s what YOU adore; cynical, amoral, corrupt thieves. You don’t believe in democracy because that is majority rule and the majority rejects your far leftist socialist, totalitarian agenda.
You may not be evil for disagreeing with me, but you are definitely stupid. You are ignorant and you willfully maintain that ignorance. You prove this by ignoring the questions I pose because the true answers are too painful for you to face. It is you that is unAmerican and anti-Constitution.
Hear, Hear
There’s no need to send it. They probably know you’re a right-wing idiot already.
https://youtu.be/J7gaqMtkPnE
Biden is only a cartoon character in the minds of people who still watch cartoons.
Idiot Biden is a complete moron.
You cannot deny idiot Biden’s incompetence. He’s an utter embarrassment.
That is exactly where greg parts ways with reality.
Yeah, but why won’t the mean old energy industry invest billions and billions in future production capacities? They’re just being greedy.
Let’s here more lies about how the idiot Biden regime is not restricting exploration and production. On orders from AOC, the coward idiot Biden strangles our energy production while he holds stocks in foreign energy companies.