On Tuesday evening, a federal appeals court ordered the Biden administration to hold a massive offshore oil and gas lease sale without eco restrictions. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of the Interiors Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) would have to proceed with Lease Sale 261, a Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale mandated under the Inflation Reduction Act. This sale, which was originally scheduled for September, had been postponed after BOEM implemented “last-minute” environmental restrictions.

These restrictions blocked off millions of acres which were previously scheduled to be leased just one month after the government entered an agreement with environmental advocacy organizations. This agreement came after years of litigation and would ensure the protection of an endangered species of whale known as “Rice’s whale” or the Gulf of Mexico whale which is a baleen whale endemic to the northern Gulf of Mexico.

However, the appeals court ultimately ruled that delaying Lease Sale 261 would not protect the species, arguing that they had rarely been spotted near the leases which were offered in the sale. The panel stated, “At lease one whale would need to traverse the area in which oil and gas activities are occurring under Lease Sale 261 and be killed by such activities. But in four separate environmental reviews over the last seven years, BOEM concluded that additional protections for the Rice’s whales are unnecessary outside of their ‘core’ habitat in the eastern Gulf - an area unrelated to Lease Sale 261 that has long been protected from oil and gas leasing.”

Senior Vice President of the American Petroleum Institute (API) stated that the restrictions put in place by BOEM were “unjustified”. He further stated that “the U.S. Gulf of Mexico plays a critical role in maintaining affordable, reliable American energy production, and today’s decision creates a greater certainty for the essential energy workforce and the entire Gulf Coast economy.”

After issuing its Lease Sale 261 notice of sale and implementing the restrictions, BOEM was sued by API as well as the State of Louisiana and Chevron as the decision made nearly six million fewer acres available for oil and gas extraction than previously scheduled. The decision also created multiple vessel restrictions for companies that obtain leases.

On Sept. 21st, a judge out of the Western District of Louisiana ordered that the Biden administration proceed with the Lease Sale 261 without restrictions. After this ruling, BOEM announced that they would be postponing the sale indefinitely, a move which has been heavily criticized by bipartisan lawmakers. On Tuesday, the appeals court ruled that BOEM was required to hold the sale within 37 days.