OCSLA

Creating Lease Certainty

There are some steps Congress could take to increase certainty for energy leases on federal lands, but there will be tradeoffs.

As my prior two posts noted, there are substantial legal authorities that allow an executive to suspend or cancel leases for energy development.  In the case of on-shore leases, that power might be extremely broad.  And with an Administration that appears to use its powers to pursue political grudges and to push the envelope on …

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Can They Do That?

The feds probably do ultimately have the authority to shut down offshore wind farms – if they ever get their act together.

This week, three different offshore wind projects that were targeted with shutdown orders by the Trump Administration won preliminary injunctions against those orders.  Those lawsuits are in response to a blanket order in December from the Trump Administration, issuing stop work orders to all off-shore wind projects in the United States.  (For some projects, this …

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The impact of Trump’s offshore leasing plans

The Administration’s leasing proposals are not likely to produce an offshore oil and gas boom unless other factors change

This post is the last in a three-part series examining the implications and context of the Trump Administration’s announcement of a proposal to dramatically expand offshore oil and gas development in the United States.  The first post focused on the legal context; the second one on the political context.  This last post synthesizes the law …

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The politics of Trump’s offshore leasing proposal

Widespread political opposition at the state level poses major obstacles to federal plans

This post is the second in a three-part series looking at the Trump Administration’s announcement of plans to vastly increase offshore oil and gas drilling.  The first post, here, focused on the legal context for those announcements.  In this post, I’ll discuss the political context.  In my last post, I’ll conclude with an analysis of …

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The Administration’s offshore oil and gas leasing proposal

Offshore leasing system requires long, complex legal process before drilling can occur

A few weeks ago the Trump Administration announced a new proposed plan to drastically increase the amount of offshore areas available for leasing for oil and gas development – essentially opening up almost all of the waters off of the lower 48 states.  The announcement at the time attracted a lot of media attention, but …

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Judge Feldman is still mad

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. You may remember Judge Martin Feldman from his decisions last summer enjoining enforcement of Interior’s first effort at a deepwater drilling moratorium, and more recently declaring that the Department must pay the legal fees of the plaintiffs in that case because it was in contempt of the injunction order. (For my take …

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What does UUD mean?

A key legal standard in public lands law is being used by the Trump Administration to stop renewable energy, but in the long run the Administration’s position may advance environmentalists objectives.