Industry groups and some Republicans are disputing the Biden administration's justification for pulling the plug on the offshore lease sale in Alaska's Cook Inlet, which it said was canceled"due to lack of industry interest."
"We certainly said, 'Hey, we support having a lease sale move forward,' and as a trade association, we don't put out any comments unless, obviously, the majority of our members support that," she told the Washington Examiner. Moriarty also likened competition over acreage to a game of poker in which energy companies are often not prepared to"show their hand" and reveal publicly whether they intend to bid or not beforehand.
As for the two Gulf lease sales canceled Wednesday, the administration said it will not move forward because of “delays due to factors including conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales.” In another case, the American Petroleum Institute is appealing a federal judge's ruling that threw out the lone offshore sale carried out last year.
The Biden administration has been under competing pressures in recent months regarding how to move forward on the leasing program with oil and gas prices high and rising to record levels.Environmental groups have been lobbying the administration to keep President Joe Biden's campaign promise of ending drilling on federal lands and waters as a way to mitigate climate change, arguing the government has the discretion to hold no sales at all.