Recent Projects

Earlier this year, a group of environmental organizations successfully challenged an offshore oil-and-gas lease sale held by the Bureau Ocean Energy Management on the basis that BOEM inadequately assessed the impacts on climate change from the combustion of the fossil fuels that the lease sale would facilitate. In its appeal to the D.C. Circuit, the American Petroleum Institute countered that any analytical limitations were harmless because the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act bars BOEM from considering climate-change impacts when administering leasing policy. Our amicus brief rebuts this argument and defends BOEM’s authority to consider downstream climate impacts in its administration of the offshore leasing program. Our brief explains that the consideration of downstream emissions is consistent with OCSLA’s text, legislative history, regulatory history, and caselaw.

In July, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released its proposed five-year offshore leasing plan, which contemplates scheduling anywhere from zero to eleven lease sales over the coming half-decade. As part of that proposal, BOEM conducts a cost-benefit analysis in which it finds net benefits from offshore leasing, but recognizes uncertainty and specifically calls for comment on this analysis.

In response to this call for comments, Policy Integrity submitted two original reports offering extensive feedback on BOEM’s cost-benefit analysis. As detailed in those reports, BOEM’s analysis severely understates the costs of OCS leasing—particularly the climate costs. Our reports offer original analysis and modeling finding that, properly considered, the climate costs of offshore leasing alone may exceed the total benefits from that leasing.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) recently released an environmental impact statement (“EIS”) for its proposal to lease more than one million acres of submerged land on the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas development. BOEM proposes to take this action despite estimating that it could lead to more than $1.3 billion in climate damages, and despite presenting no estimate of the economic benefits, against which these climate costs might be compared.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for leasing offshore areas for energy development, including areas for wind energy. The agency has so far awarded 13 commercial offshore wind leases, totaling about 17 GW of capacity. In response to its request for feedback on the future of its offshore wind program for the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, our comments to BOEM suggest steps toward developing a robust offshore wind program that will deliver benefits to the public for decades to come.

The Department of the Interior’s offshore leasing program must analyze and account for the potential for environmental damage, the potential for the discovery of oil and gas, and the potential for adverse impact on the coastal zone. In addition, offshore oil and gas leases must provide fair market value for private use and development of these publicly-owned oil and gas resources. Our comments to the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) explain why its Draft Proposed Program for 2019-2024, which would replace BOEM’s existing Program for 2017-2022, fails to meet its statutory mandates under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).

We submitted comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s environmental impact statement for potential offshore oil drilling and an undersea oil pipeline off Alaska’s northern coast. While expanded drilling in the Arctic presents many climate and public health concerns, BOEM did use the Social Cost of Carbon in assessing environmental impacts of the Liberty Development and Production Plan. Our comments encourage BOEM to continue using the best available methods for the Social Cost of Carbon in future environmental impacts statements, and we also recommended that BOEM use the Interagency Working Group’s Social Cost of Methane to quantify methane damages.

We recently submitted comments to BOEM in response to its proposed five-year offshore leasing program for 2017-2022. In its proposed program, BOEM qualitatively considers the option value, or informational value of delaying leasing until more information is available on relevant environmental, social, and technological uncertainties. In addition, BOEM will now consider environmental and social costs in its “hurdle price” analysis that helps determine whether and when to offer areas for lease. Building on this progress, we recommend that BOEM take additional steps to strengthen its analysis in line with best practices and OCSLA’s mandate to balance economic, social, and environmental values.

Policy Integrity recently filed public comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM’s) new offshore leasing proposal, suggesting that the agency update its use of “option value” to improve its valuation of offshore resources.

Policy Integrity senior advisor Michael Livermore represented the plaintiff in Center for Sustainable Economy v. Jewell, a lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM’s) 2012-2017 leasing plan for the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaskan coast. The Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) argued that incomplete and flawed economic analysis leads the government to sell resource leases too quickly and too cheaply, potentially costing the American public billions of dollars and leading to high-risk drilling. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against CSE in the case. However, part of the ruling could lead to major changes in how the government values the natural resources it leases.

Policy Integrity’s multi-year effort to make the government account for “option value” in its natural resource leasing decisions has begun to pay off. In its new proposal for offshore oil and gas leasing from 2017-2022, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) devotes 12 pages to option value and related resource valuation concepts, which will now be considered in leasing decisions. Much of this language closely resembles the arguments Policy Integrity has made to the agency repeatedly since 2009.