"Offshore Drilling: Trump's Leasing Plan Faces New Court Challenge" [1]
"Environmentalists yesterday mounted a new legal attack against the Trump administration's efforts to lease as much offshore acreage as it can to oil and gas developers.
Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a supplemental complaint in their U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenge of a March sale that opened 78 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to energy industry bidders (Energywire, March 14).
Since that time, Trump's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has announced plans to once again put all available Gulf acreage on the auction block on Aug. 21. This month's sale is the focus of yesterday's supplemental filing.
"Ignoring the damage the oil industry does to the Gulf environment is reckless and illegal," Kristen Monsell, oceans program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement yesterday. "Marine life, coastal communities and our climate are all paying a terrible price as this region is treated like a sacrifice zone.""