The sale of offshore oil and gas leases on more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico was canceled by a U.S. judge who ordered regulators to take a harder look at the impact on climate change.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., vacated the lease sale in a 67-page decision, issued Thursday. The judge found that the Interior Department underestimated the climate impacts of the leases and doing a further analysis wouldn’t overly harm the companies seeking the leases.
“The leases have not become effective and no activity on them is taking place,” the judge wrote. If the leases were to take effect, it would be much harder to cancel them, Contreras said.
