The Biden administration is preparing to sell more than 80 million acres of Gulf of Mexico land to oil and gas drilling companies in the largest federal offshore drilling auction in U.S. history-less than a week after the UN Climate Change Conference COP26, nearly 200 countries Commit to reducing fossil fuel emissions.
The annual Gulf of Mexico lease sale is scheduled to be held in New Orleans on November 17.
The 80 million acres of land sold are expected to produce approximately 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 cubic feet of natural gas in the next 50 years.
The controversial auction will be held a few months after Hurricane Ida destroyed the old fossil fuel infrastructure on the coast of Louisiana, causing dozens of oil spills and petrochemical spills.
Unsurprisingly, this move aroused the anger of climate activists.
More than 250 environmental, indigenous and social justice groups sent a letter to the President of the United States Joe Biden He and other officials in his government “urgently requested” the cancellation of lease sales on Wednesday. They said this was a “sneer” at the climate promise made at COP26 to avoid a catastrophic increase in global warming of more than 1.5°C. Industrial level.
“The Gulf of Mexico continues to be seen as a sacrifice zone for oil and gas development, causing disproportionate damage to local communities already on the front lines of climate disasters, causing severe damage to the environment, and exacerbating global climate change,” the letter reads.
“The communities in this area are front-line blacks, aboriginals, people of color and low-income families who have been living in degraded air, land and water environments for decades.”
“There is still time to fulfill your commitments, terminate new leases on public land and waters, and resolve environmental racism. Please use your existing power to postpone the sale of Lease No. 257 in order to consider the latest evidence, and correctly estimate and acknowledge the issue. Lease sales in the region.”
“It’s hard to imagine more dangerous and hypocritical actions after the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, a lawyer at the non-profit Center for Biodiversity (Kristen Monsell). ABC information.
“Holding this lease will only lead to more harmful oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf of Mexico.”
Weekly newspaper The White House has been contacted to comment on the auction.
On October 1, a damaged underwater pipeline off the coast of California leaked approximately 25,000 gallons of crude oil, overflowing the ocean and beaches.
The winning bidder on November 17 will be able to build 231 miles of platform rights and drill for oil at a depth of 11,000 feet.
However, the climate organization said that the distance from the coast and the deeper drilling depth make it more likely to reproduce the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The disaster caused 4 million barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf.
President Joe Biden promised to ban new oil and gas leases on public land and oceans when he ran for president.
In January of this year, within a few hours of his inauguration, Biden issued an executive order to stop the new federal lease while the government was conducting an environmental review — but the review has not yet materialized.
The suspension is not expected to have a huge impact on natural gas drilling companies, many of which have already obtained leases and permits for drilling on public lands and waters in the next few years.
On November 1, Biden urged countries to “seize the opportunity” to take action on climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
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