Administration to Exempt Gulf Oil and Gas from Endangered Species Act Requirements
All oil and gas activity in federal offshore waters in the Gulf of Mexico will be exempt from Endangered Species Act protections, senior administration officials said this week (POLITICO Pro, subscription).
What’s going on: At a Tuesday meeting in Washington of the Endangered Species Committee—a group last convened in the 1990s—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “said the move was needed to ensure a continuous energy supply and to head off litigation from environmental groups.”
- Hegseth added that “the Interior Department notified the Department of Defense in January that ongoing litigation ‘threatened to halt oil and gas production in the Gulf.’”
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum gathered the group to consider a request from the Defense Department to make the exemption.
What the exemption covers: The exemption, the broadest one yet considered by the committee, applies to all oil and gas production in the Gulf.
Following through: The meeting and exemption follow President Trump’s January 2025 executive order “Declaring a National Energy Emergency.”
- The EO directs the committee to “identify obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure specifically deriving from implementation of the ESA.”