Environmental groups sue to stop U.S. oil and gas auction off Alaska coast

Dec 24, 2022 Court Stories, Features / Columnists, News

Kaieteur News – On Wednesday, environmental groups sued the United States Biden-Administration to block the sale of oil and gas drilling off the coast of Alaska.

The legal challenge was filed in Alaska’s Federal Court. The sale is scheduled for December 30, 2023 and would see nearly one-million acres in the Cook Inlet, Alaska, being auctioned off and opening the door to decades of future oil-and-gas drilling.

Earth Justice reported that Cook Inlet is home to beluga whales and sea otters protected under the Endangered Species Act. It also supports thriving subsistence, commercial and recreational fisheries and a multi-faceted tourist industry, fed by visitors from around the world who are drawn by the region’s unparalleled natural beauty.

(Photo credit: Alaska News Source)

The Inlet is also essential for Alaska Native communities, who have stewarded these lands and waters for millennia. Alaska, meanwhile, is experiencing more extreme consequences of climate change than the continental United States. Coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, melting sea ice, and fishery collapse are all ramifications of the worsening global climate crisis, which will only intensify with new oil-and-gas drilling operations.

According to Reuters, the sale was among the concessions to the oil and gas sector included in President Joe Biden’s climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Under the law, the administration is required to hold the sale by Dec 31, 2022.

The U.S Interior Department had scrapped the Cook Inlet sale this year before the IRA passed, citing a lack of industry interest.

The groups suing the administration are Cook Inletkeeper, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Center for Biological Diversity, Kachemak Bay Conservation Society and Natural Resources Defense Council. In the complaint, the groups alleged the sale’s environmental review violated federal environmental laws by not adequately considering its impact on climate change as well as consequences for threatened species such as the Cook Inlet beluga whale and humpback whales.

The groups are asking the court to vacate the environmental review and any leases that are executed following the sale. “Cook Inlet is already experiencing severe effects of climate change, and new oil and gas leasing will only magnify those harms,” the complaint said.