The Biden administration announced on Friday that it is planning as many as three new oil and gas drilling lease sales, reversing the President’s campaign promise to halt all new offshore drilling.
The plan, however, would also allow officials to offer more federal waters for clean wind energy.
The drilling lease sales would all take place in the Gulf of Mexico, scheduled for 2025, 2027, and 2029, but would exclude sales off Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
The five-year drilling plan “represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
The Inflation Reduction Act required the Interior Department to propose a certain number of oil and gas leases in federal waters in exchange for the ability to propose clean offshore wind energy projects, and tying clean wind energy to fossil fuel drilling was a key demand of Senator Joe Manchin, who wrote much of the bill, CNN reported.
Under the Trump administration, 47 lease sales were proposed off all coastal areas in the US, including the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, over the five years from 2024 to 2029.
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