US judge blocks sale of Gulf of Mexico drilling leases over climate concerns

theguardian.com:

A US federal judge has blocked a highly controversial sale of oil and gas drilling leases across 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico, ruling that Joe Biden’s administration did not properly consider the leases’ impact upon the climate crisis.

The decision, handed down by the DC court late on Thursday, represents a landmark victory for environmental groups that had sued the government to prevent what was the largest ever auction of oil and gas leases in the gulf’s history.

“I’m thrilled the court saw through the Biden administration’s horribly reckless decision to hold the largest oil lease sale in US history without carefully studying the risks,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“New oil leases are fundamentally incompatible with addressing the climate emergency, and they’ll cause more oil spills and harm to wildlife and people in the gulf.”

Rudolph Contreras, a US district court judge for the District of Columbia, was critical of federal government agencies for their environmental analyses that led to the lease sale, writing that they were guilty of a “serious failing” and a “grave error”. He ordered that the new leases be vacated and for the department of interior to conduct a new analysis that accounts for the planet-heating gases that would result if the drilling went ahead.

The lease sale was held in November, just days after UN climate talks in Scotland in which the president vowed the US would “lead by example” in tackling the climate crisis. Biden had previously promised to shut down all new oil and gas drilling to curb emissions of planet-heating gases.

The administration had claimed that it was compelled to hold the sale due to a successful legal challenge by a dozen