Judges Say You Can’t Build That

Two case studies on LNG and oil drilling is why the U.S. desperately needs permitting reform.

Kamala Harris has walked back her support in 2019 for a nationwide fracking ban. It’s an impressive rhetorical backflip, but will she push back against her friends in the climate lobby who are using the courts to restrict oil and gas production?

Consider an August court ruling that could stop almost all offshore oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Federal Judge Deborah Boardman struck down a 2020 environmental assessment by the National Marine Fisheries Service that had analyzed risks to endangered species in the Gulf from oil drilling.

Green lobbies claimed the agency’s “biological opinion” underestimated risks from potential spills to threatened species and lacked sufficient protections for the rice whale. The judge largely agreed, and courts typically remand environmental assessments to agencies for revisions when they find shortcomings.

Not Judge Boardman, who vacated the assessment, meaning new drilling permits and leases can’t be issued until a new biological opinion is completed and existing ones may also be legally void. The upshot? Oil production in the Gulf could grind to a halt in December when the vacatur takes effect. Will a Harris Administration appeal such verdicts by willful liberal judges?

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