Environmental groups challenge offshore oil, gas lease sale

Four national environmental groups have filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging the sale last week of offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. As The Times-Picayune reports, the lawsuit contends that the federal agency has not fully addressed the risks to wildlife and the environment from oil spills in the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. The suit says BOEM officials violated the federal National Environmental Policy Act by not determining the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on wildlife and then using that information to rewrite an environmental impact statement supporting last week’s lease sale, and instead relied on incomplete information gathered for an environmental statement before the spill. The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the suit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity. A spokesman for BOEM says the agency does not comment on pending lawsuits.