Days after promising to fight climate change, US auctions off oil and gas drilling lease in Gulf of Mexico
Oil drilling rigs at Aransas Pass in Port Aransas, Texas
The Biden administration has leased millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, days after President Joe Biden asserted in the climate summit in Glasgow that US would “lead by example” in tackling climate change.
Environmental activists have called the move “reckless”, saying it will lock in years, and potentially decades, of planet-heating emissions.
The lease sale has the potential to emit more than 516 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere — the equivalent to annual emissions of 130 coal-fired power plants or 112 million cars, according to the Center of Biological Diversity, an NGO based in Arizona, US.
Even Biden’s Democratic allies were surprised with the auction.
“This administration went to Scotland and told the world that America’s climate leadership is back, and now it’s about to hand over 80m acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to fossil fuel companies,” Guardian quoted Raul Grijalva, chair of the House natural resources committee, as saying.
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“Thelease sale is a step in the wrong direction, and the administration needs to do better,” he added.
The Department of the Interior, which oversees public lands and waters, has estimated that there is as much as 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 trillion cubic feet of gas available for extraction.
A separate lease sale offered by the government in Alaska’s Cook Inlet will offer up another 192m barrels of oil and 301bn cubic ft of gas to drillers, according to the Guardian.
Watch | It's official! America is a Climate Hypocrite | US to sell gas fields in 'Gulf Of Mexico'
The US government had announced to auction 80 million acres, which is twice as large as Florida, but only 1.7 million were actually leased, with companies placing bids on just 308 out of about 15,000 blocks.
Thirty-three companies participated in the sale.
The firmswill pay a total of nearly $192 million to drill in the water, in addition to royalties for what they extract.
Earlier this month at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, President Joe Biden had said that US"will demonstrate to the world" that it is "not only back at the table" but will "hopefully lead by the power of our example."
He reiterated that the USwill cut back carbon emissions by 50 per cent - 52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
"I know it hasn't been the case...Our administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words," he said.
(With inputs from agencies)