Biden administration to allow oil leasing to resume on federal land

Drilling for oil and gas on federal lands will resume after a federal appeals court ruled that the White House could use a new metric to calculate the potential environmental impact,  the Biden administration announced.

"With this ruling, the Department continues its planning for responsible oil and gas development on America’s public lands and waters," Department of the Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz told Bloomberg News in an email. 

"Calculating the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions provides important information that has been part of the foundation of the work the Interior Department has undertaken over the past year," she said.

Oil and gas leases were delayed by the Interior Department last month after a federal district judge in Louisiana stopped the Biden administration from using the "social cost of carbon" environmental metric, which was established in a 2021 executive order, before allowing leases, Bloomberg reported.

On Wednesday, a New Orleans-based federal appeals court allowed the White House to "temporarily let federal agencies use Biden’s new cost-benefit analysis rules, which ultimately aim to slow climate change by making activities that emit greenhouse gases sharply more expensive," Bloomberg reported.

The Interior Department said it will work on reforming U.S. oil and gas programs to address "significant shortcomings."

"Specifically, the Department is committed to ensuring its programs account for climate impacts, provide a fair return to taxpayers, discourage speculation, hold operators responsible for remediation, and more fully include communities, Tribal, state and local governments in decision-making," the agency wrote, per Bloomberg.

Environmental concerns behind drilling have been a contentious issue for the administration.

A D.C. district judge sided with environmental groups in January by invalidating the Biden administration's oil and gas leases for 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico over climate considerations.

The Interior Department's decision to allow drilling to resume comes as gas prices are expected to go even higher after already hitting an all-time highs under the Biden administration.