Trump Administration trying to strip protections from Gulf marine life

Washington, D.C. —

The Trump Administration today announced it is considering an exemption to allow oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico to drive the Gulf’s most imperiled creatures,  including sea turtles, whales, fish, rays, and corals, to extinction. 

In a federal register notice, the U.S. Department of Interior says it will hold a rare convening of a high-level group called the Endangered Species Committee on March 31 “regarding an Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of America Oil and Gas Activities.” That could kick off a months-long process to decide whether to give special treatment to the oil industry by allowing offshore drilling to go forward even if it would lead to the extinction of Gulf species.  

The Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the “God Squad” because its members have authority over the life and death of imperiled species, would be meeting for the first time in three decades. The law provides the committee authority only in extreme circumstances to grant an exemption when there is no way for an activity to proceed without leading to the extinction of one or more species. None of those circumstances are present in the Gulf.    

“The marine species in the Gulf are our natural heritage. There’s no imaginable justification to sacrifice them,” said Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice Managing Attorney for Oceans.  “It’s beyond reckless even to consider greenlighting the extinction of sea turtles, fish, whales, rays, and corals to further pad the oil industry’s pockets at the public’s expense. Giving carte blanche to industry also takes us further away from renewable energy that is cleaner, cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient than ever before.”   

As the past few weeks have made clear, further handouts to the oil and gas industry will not affect prices at the pump, which are determined by a volatile world market that is highly vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts. The U.S. is already producing more oil than any nation in history and is the world’s largest producer of gas and is a net-exporter of both commodities. 

The Endangered Species Committee is made up of the secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture and the Army; administrators from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency; and the head of the Council of Economic Advisers. Each has a vote. The group also includes one person each from any affected states. 

Since its passage in 1973, the Endangered Species Act has helped save thousands of plants and animals from extinction. The endangered species in the Gulf face dwindling numbers and even extinction from the noise and pollution in an increasingly industrialized environment.  

Rice’s whales, the only whales that live year-round in the Gulf, are down to fewer than 100 individuals on Earth, and 100 scientists warned in a letter that, unless the whales are better protected, we could see the first human-caused extinction of a large whale species in recorded history.  

This latest action to convene the Endangered Species Committee is part of a larger pattern of relaxing key safeguards in the Gulf, as well as the reckless approval of BP’s first completely new oilfield in the Gulf since its Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.