Today, environmental and Gulf groups challenged the Department of the Interior’s outdated and ineffective air quality regulations for offshore oil and gas development. The Interior Department finalized these rules in June 2020 after rejecting an Obama administration proposal that would have updated air pollution controls dating back to 1980. The rules govern air quality control, reporting, and compliance for all U.S. offshore oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Although the Interior Department has a legal duty to regulate waste and ensure that offshore operations comply with air quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is still following regulations that have barely been updated for decades. These rules fail to account for technological advances in air pollution control and industry practices and do not reflect EPA’s current standards.

These failures have serious consequences for Gulf communities and the environment. Air emissions from drilling operations, support vessels, flaring and venting, as well as the refining, transportation, and combustion of these fossil fuels, represent a major source of pollution in both offshore and onshore areas, including in communities already overburdened by industrial emissions and related health impacts.

Additionally, the current rules fail to do anything about methane pollution, complicating the U.S. effort to sharply reduce methane and other harmful air pollutants from the oil and gas industry. The United States committed to slash methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030, announced alongside 50 other countries at COP28 in Dubai last fall.

Recent science shows that methane emissions from offshore drilling in the Gulf are up to three times higher than what Interior has modeled. A substantial amount of methane emissions from offshore drilling — which makes up almost 10% of total emissions from petroleum systems in the U.S. — is not being mitigated or even properly accounted for. Methane pollution not only accelerates climate change and is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere, but also contributes to ozone pollution in the Gulf.

Earthjustice filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Healthy Gulf, Oceana, and Sierra Club.

“Healthy Gulf stands firmly with our partners in condemning the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) dangerously outdated air quality regulations, unchanged since 1980. These rules fail to mitigate the severe air pollution from offshore drilling that endangers Gulf communities and exacerbates the climate crisis,” said Martha Collins, Healthy Gulf Executive Director. “BOEM must immediately modernize its standards to match current EPA regulations, and we hope federal regulators will finally prioritize the health of our environment and communities over the fossil fuel industry’s profits.”

“In order to meet its legal obligation to effectively regulate air pollution from offshore drilling, the Interior Department will need to correct these extremely outdated rules,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “Millions of Gulf residents are dealing with excessive air pollution from offshore drilling that drifts onshore and detrimentally affects their health. Meanwhile, Interior has refused to take action to address the massive amounts of methane emissions from offshore oil-and-gas operations, undermining both domestic and international commitments by the U.S. to address one of the most potent greenhouse gasses.”

“We have to change the outdated rules that have left Gulf ecosystems and people’s health horribly at risk from air pollution spewed by offshore drilling,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Harming our oceans to eke out hard-to-reach oil makes zero sense during this climate emergency, but until we phase out drilling, oil industry operations in the Gulf should have to use technology to curb pollution as much as possible.”

“As the climate crisis nears its breaking point, now is not the time for routine handouts to Big Oil, especially ‘super emitting’ offshore drilling facilities,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth. “The industry’s harms are extensive, from killing endangered species like the Rice’s whale to degrading the air and water quality of Gulf communities. We hope today’s lawsuit can push federal regulators to finally fix these ineffective air pollution rules and help stop this industry’s destruction for good.”

“It is time that BOEM and Interior take responsibility and hold oil and gas companies accountable by updating standards to protect people and the climate,” said Athan Manuel Director of Lands Protection Program at Sierra Club. “Up to this point, it seems agencies with oversight of offshore oil and gas drilling have taken an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to limiting air pollution from these rigs in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. But the impacts of this pollution are felt just as acutely by coastal communities as the fossil fuel development on land.”

“It’s a travesty that Gulf communities are forced to live with outdated air quality regulations that have been largely unchanged since the original ‘Star Wars’ was in theaters,” said Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon. “We know methane is 80 times more potent at inducing climate change than carbon dioxide, and the Department of the Interior’s antiquated emissions standards are allowing offshore drilling to poison air quality in the Gulf and exacerbate the climate crisis. The Gulf Coast is already the U.S. sacrifice zone when it comes to offshore drilling, and the very least the Department of the Interior can do is update these regulations to a 21st century standard.”

Background

The Air Quality Control, Reporting, and Compliance rule is mandated under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). The current 2020 rule rejected significant changes proposed in 2016 by the Obama administration and kept in place the Interior Department’s outdated and ineffective 1980 regulations governing air emissions from offshore oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Obama administration’s proposed rule would have included critical updates that: addressed all current criteria and precursor pollutants and set short-term rather than annual limits; changed how lessees evaluate and model emissions, as well as the locations where impacts are calculated; ensured that its standards are updated with any EPA revisions to air quality standards; required pollution controls for lower levels of emissions; and required the consolidation of emissions from multiple facilities.

Oil and gas exploration, development, and production in the Gulf spans more than 13 million acres of federal waters, including more than 2,400 active oil and gas leases and approximately 2,000 active oil and gas platforms. Yet only about 25% of those active leases have begun producing oil and gas — meaning industry is sitting on about 9 million acres still available to develop far into the future.