A 2023 offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico suffered a setback this week, as a federal judge said the Interior Department failed to consider the sale’s effects on emissions and an endangered whale.
Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management fell short in its National Environmental Policy Act review of the congressionally mandated sale, specifically citing planet-warming emissions and the critically endangered Rice’s whale.
“NEPA may not demand perfection, but it demands more than what BOEM has offered here,” said Mehta, in a summary judgment Thursday.
The judge has yet to decide what that will mean for the existing offshore leases from the sale in the Gulf of Mexico, which was recently renamed the Gulf of America by President Donald Trump. The sale netted nearly $264 million.
