Oil Price by Julianne Geiger - Feb 25, 2021
Reeling from the effects of the pandemic, the oil industry is in no mood to fool around. When newly inaugurated President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project, refiners on the Gulf Coast shuddered. How would they get the Canadian oil they needed? But when President Biden paused all oil and gas permitting on federal lands and waters and canceled lease sales, struggling oil and gas companies took the gloves off and prepared for a fight.
At stake is the industry’s very survival.
One recently announced fight involves Continental Resources, an Oklahoma-based exploration and production company that relies on permits to allow it to conduct its normal business. But in January, on the day President Biden was inaugurated, the Department of the Interior clamped down--on President Biden’s direction--on approving permits for oil and gas exploration on federal lands and in federal waters. It did this not by banning permits outright but by limiting which Interior employees could approve permits. The number of employees to approve permits has dwindled significantly to a total of nine, limited to “leadership†only. It is an effective suspension of the permitting process, although not an outright suspension.
The suspension order, signed January 20, was to last for a period of sixty days--until March 21.
But according to Continental, the Department of the Interior’s actions are unconstitutional, and on February 23, it filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in North Dakota. The challenge, according to the 44-page lawsuit, is that by delaying 50 of Continental’s permits, it has violated a provision in The Mineral Leasing Act, which spells out strict deadlines that the Department of the Interior must follow during the permitting review process.
More:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Oil-Industry-Is-Ready-To-Fight-President-Biden-In-Court.html
