Offshore staff
LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana – The American Petroleum Institute (API) has filed a motion for preliminary injunction filed in the US District Court Western District of Louisiana in Lake Charles, Louisiana, seeking immediate action from the court ahead of the planned Lease Sale 261.
In the filing, API said that in its recent Final Notice of Sale, BOEM inserted provisions “radically altering” the terms of Lease Sale 261, imposing a “burdensome new stipulation as part of the lease terms and withdrawing 6 million acres—larger than the state of Massachusetts— from the sale entirely.”
API further said that “BOEM made those last-minute changes in a claimed effort to further protect the ‘Rice’s whale’ . . . even though BOEM had previously and repeatedly found similar measures unnecessary, even though BOEM provided no meaningful explanation for its change in position, and even though Congress directed BOEM to proceed with a specifically defined lease sale with dispatch.”
The filing further added that: “BOEM now intends to hold Lease Sale 261 on September 27, 2023, subject to those new restrictions. This effectively forces bidders into a new stipulation with burdensome vessel-transit restrictions and denies bidders any chance to bid on the withdrawn acreage, while simultaneously denying States their legal right to meaningfully participate in the leasing process and depriving them of millions of dollars from the now-diminished lease sale.”
API went on to say that “this court should grant [the] plaintiffs—the State of Louisiana, the American Petroleum Institute, and Chevron U.S.A. Inc.—a preliminary injunction and prevent those unlawful provisions from permanently disrupting the result of the fast-approaching lease sale.”
Without such injunction, API commented that the plaintiffs “face real and irreparable harm if the challenged provisions remain effective when bids must be submitted, as they will irrevocably affect the bids placed at the upcoming sale, altering the outcome in ways that cannot be undone while permanently depriving the State of Louisiana of potential revenue.” For these reasons, “the challenged provisions must be enjoined.”
08.29.2023
