Court orders federal agency to better protect Rice's whales from oil, gas drilling in Gulf of Mexico
The US District Court for the District of Maryland said the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) biological opinion for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico fails to protect an endangered species of whale and sturgeon.
The ruling could imperil federal offshore oil and gas leasing drilling in the Gulf, several energy trade association defendants in the case, Sierra Club v. NMFS, said.
The court said it would toss the biological opinion on Dec. 20, 2024, if NMFS fails to complete a new one.
NMFS has started working on a revised biological opinion. The regulator told the court that it hoped to complete the review by yearend, but that it could slip to spring 2025.
Nearly 4 years ago, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the NMFS’ biological opinion.
The court on Aug. 19 sided with the environmental groups, saying “underestimated the risk and harms of oil spills to protected species” and its jeopardy analysis for two listed species, the Rice’s whale and the Gulf sturgeon, “assumed these species’ populations remained as large as they were before the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, even though the record evidence and NMFS’s own findings indicated that [the oil spill] significantly diminished their populations.”
It further said that the agency addressed only 2 of the 5 identified stressors likely to jeopardize the endangered Rice’s whale, and it never explained how mitigation measures would protect the species.
"For these reasons, the [biological opinion] is unlawful and must be vacated," the court stated.
Oil and gas groups expressed disappointment, particularly about the court’s decision to vacate even as the agencies are currently working to revise it, and fears about the potential impacts of the ruling on the offshore industry.
"The disruptive consequences to the Gulf of Mexico states and US economy cannot be understated if the federal agencies fail to timely issue a new biological opinion,” the American Petroleum Institute, the National Ocean Industries Association and the EnerGeo Alliance, all defendants in the case, said in a joint statement. “A timely completion of the revised biological opinion should be their highest priority. Any disruptions would not only impact the hundreds of thousands of energy workers in the region but could increase energy insecurity by jeopardizing a significant amount of oil production coming from the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 15% of the US total."
The compatibility of Gulf of Mexico oil and gas development with the future of the Rice’s whale has featured in several legal disputes in recent years.
Last year, the Biden administration agreed to exclude the Rice's whales’ habitat from any lease sales and require oil and gas-related vessels to reduce speed to 10 knots when traveling through the whale's defined habitat.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) added those stipulations in its proposed September 2023 Lease Sale 261, but the oil and gas industry successfully fought to remove the protections from the sale. The legal cases delayed the sale until December 2023 (OGJ Online, Dec 4, 2023).
The next federal Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale is scheduled for 2025.
Cathy Landry | Washington Correspondent
Cathy Landry has worked over 20 years as a journalist, including 17 years as an energy reporter with Platts News Service (now S&P Global) in Washington and London.
She has served as a wire-service reporter, general news and sports reporter for local newspapers and a feature writer for association and company publications.
Cathy has deep public policy experience, having worked 15 years in Washington energy circles.
She earned a master’s degree in government from The Johns Hopkins University and studied newspaper journalism and psychology at Syracuse University.
