Biden administration proposes to offer fewest-ever offshore drilling rights sales

The Biden administration intends to offer up only three chances for oil companies to bid for the right to drill offshore over the next several years — the fewest offshore lease sales in the history of the program. 

It announced the details of its long-awaited offshore drilling plan for 2024 through 2029 on Friday. 

The plan prevents new offshore leasing anywhere outside the Gulf of Mexico. It offers up three lease sales there, slating them for 2025, 2027 and 2029. 

The department has already considered public input on the plan but must wait at least 60 days before making it final. 

The Biden administration is offering up significantly fewer offshore drilling auctions than even its Democratic predecessors. 

The Obama and Clinton administrations put forward plans with 16 sales each, though only 11 or 12 of those planned sales were actually held under each. 

The American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil and gas industry, slammed the plan as “restrictive.”

“This restrictive offshore leasing program is the latest tactic in a coordinated strategy to reduce energy production, ultimately weakening America’s energy dominance, limiting consumers access to affordable reliable energy and compromising our ability to lead on the global stage,” the group’s president and CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement. 

At the same time, the plan disappointed some environmentalists, who had hoped the administration wouldn’t put any new lease sales on the table. When Biden was on the 2020 campaign trail, he called for a ban on new oil and gas permitting on public lands and water. 

Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice, said in a statement the proposal “represents a crucial missed opportunity to minimize future oil and gas drilling.”

“We are too far along in the climate crisis to be committing ourselves to decades of new fossil fuel extraction, especially following the hottest summer in recorded history,” she added.

But the political and legal backdrop has changed since the last time Biden was on the campaign trail.

The passage of the Democrats’ climate, tax and health care bill stipulated that to auction off the rights to build offshore wind turbines, the federal government must also sell offshore drilling rights.

This provision was widely viewed as a concession to win the support of swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). 

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, in a statement, described the department’s proposal as one that furthers the offshore wind industry.

“The Proposed Program, which represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history, sets a course for the Department to support the growing offshore wind industry and protect against the potential for environmental damage and adverse impacts to coastal communities,” she said. 

A press release from the department also said that limiting the program to a maximum of three lease sales puts the government’s offshore program in line with its goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. 

Manchin bashed the plan in a statement, accusing the administration of putting “their radical political agenda over American energy security.”

“To be clear — three lease sales is more than the zero we would have gotten had it not been for the IRA,” he said in a written statement, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act. “But it makes no sense at all to actively be limiting our energy production while our adversaries are weaponizing energy around the world.”

A previous draft plan issued by the Biden administration last year left open a wider range of possibilities for the offshore program. It proposed as many as 11 lease sales or as few as zero. 

Updated at 9:07 a.m.