Challenging Offshore Oil Drilling In The Gulf Of Mexico

The federal government is illegally doling out deepwater drilling permits to big oil companies without requiring them to submit plans that detail how they would respond to a major spill. Earthjustice is fighting this negligent practice in federal court.

Clients

Regional Office / Program

Case Overview

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster still reeks: throughout the Gulf ecosystem, wildlife is suffering and local economies are limping. The tragedy wiped out beloved wetlands and beaches and might have damaged Gulf fisheries forever.

And yet, for all the complexity that has surfaced in the wake of the spill, the lead up to BP’s epic blow-out was stunningly simple. The multinational oil giant skated through the federal permitting process because the government allowed it to skirt a law that requires oil companies to disclose in their exploratory drilling plans both a well blow-out scenario and a worst case scenario response plan.

This practice has become the norm—oil giants are being given the rights to drill in risky waters without adhering to the letter of the law. Earthjustice filed a lawsuit that asks the Court of Appeals to review the government’s policy of exempting oil companies from complying with the law as well as any recently approved oil exploration plans that fail to include the required blow-out scenarios. Though we’ve garnered victories, including an agreement to require such scenarios for new wells, negligence still reigns in the regulation of offshore oil drilling. Earthjustice continues its fight.

A controlled burn of oil from the Deepwater Horizon / BP oil spill sends towers of fire hundreds of feet into the air over the Gulf of Mexico on June 9, 2010.
A controlled burn of oil from the Deepwater Horizon / BP oil spill sends towers of fire hundreds of feet into the air over the Gulf of Mexico on June 9, 2010. (Petty Officer First Class John Masson / U.S. Coast Guard)

Case Updates

November 23, 2022 Document

Conservation Groups' Opposition to Motions to Dismiss Gulf Lease 257

Following reinstatement of massive offshore lease after passage of Inflation Reduction Act

August 30, 2022 Press Release: Victory

Federal Court Sends Two Unlawful Trump-Era Offshore Oil Lease Sales in Gulf of Mexico Back to Department of Interior to Reconsider

Court rules that the 78 million acre sales violated bedrock environmental law

August 30, 2022 Document

2018 Gulf Lease Sale Appeal

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the Trump administration unlawfully auctioned off millions of acres to oil companies in two 2018 Gulf of Mexico lease sales. Reversing a lower court’s decision, the appellate court held that the federal officials arbitrarily relied on inadequate environmental analyses of the sales’ effects and relied on incorrect...