but lawyers warned him the developer, ConocoPhillips, would win a court challenge. The government and ConocoPhillips agreed the company would drill on three sites rather than the proposed five, but that compromise was unacceptable, environmental campaigners tell me, because the government should have found a way to deny the project.
This was already addressed. By law, the government must approve a permit unless doing so would be illegal.. The following year, the government offered just 128,511 acres for lease, the fewest in a decade.
On Sunday, the US Interior Department announced that nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean would be "indefinitely off limits" for oil and gas drilling. The move ensures that important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears and other wildlife "will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development″, the White House said in a statement.
The government will offer more acres for lease this year, partly because Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) inserted a provision in last year’s climate and spending bill that requires the Interior Department to sell drilling leases whenever it offers land for renewable energy development. Even still, this year’s offerings mark a decline from the recent past.