Atlantic storm Milton strengthened Monday to a Category 5 hurricane with maximum wind speeds of 125 mph in the Gulf of Mexico and is taking aim at Florida’s Gulf Coast where residents are preparing for evacuations.
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference the storm is expected to make landfall in his state Thursday.
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Offshore drilling has been a cornerstone of global energy production since the 1800s, fueling the American way of life and powering the global economy. From the early days of “on-water-drilling” to the advancement of the fixed platform units of today, offshore drilling has consistently contributed around 30 percent of global oil production. In the U.S., supply on federal offshore lands in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for approximately 15 percent of total crude oil production.
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In 2022, 100 marine scientists launched a campaign to stop oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, over concerns that the activity could impact a rare species of whale. EarthJustice, an environmentalist nonprofit that litigates environmental issues, joined in the fight.
While oil spills can directly kill whales, the main threat to marine life from oil and gas development is vessel strikes and underwater noise.
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After the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ order last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that it scheduled Lease Sale 261 in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico for December 20.
In September, a federal judge ruled the Biden administration must go through with offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by September 27 as originally planned and under original conditions. The Fifth Circuit concurred but amended the ruling, pushing back the lease sale date to November 8.
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The Biden administration issued a final notice Wednesday for the lease of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore energy activity, a figure which represents a 6.4 million acre reduction from the initial proposal, Bloomberg News reported.
The 6.4 million acre reduction amounts to 9% of the initially proposed lease area from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), according to Bloomberg. The reduction follows the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) July decision to settle with environmentalist groups and move to introduce protections for the Rice’s whale species in a nearly 11 million acre swath of the Gulf.
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President Joe Biden will announce the first offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico at an event Thursday afternoon to promote his administration’s economic agenda, according to the White House.
The lease will be spread across three areas, one roughly 100,000 acre area offshore of Lake Charles, Louisiana and two areas totaling roughly 200,000 acres offshore of Galveston, Texas, according to the White House. While the administration has previously held sales for offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, the Carolinas and California, and is considering several additional projects off the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico sale — scheduled for August 29 — represents the first federal lease in the region.
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The majority of Americans feel they cannot keep up with the cost of living as inflation and the price of goods continue to rise, according to new polling data.
A poll from NBC News asked Americans, “Do you think that your family’s income is … going up faster than the cost of living, staying about even with the cost of living, or falling behind the cost of living?”
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The Biden Administration last June unveiled its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” Despite its anodyne-sounding name, the “national strategy” was anything but anodyne. The pamphlet represented the logical culmination of the Left’s cynical use of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot as a means of ginning up large-scale, nationwide anti-Republican/anti-Trump voter sentiment.
The result, evinced again by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s disgraceful October 2021 memo directing the FBI to intrude on local school board meetings and crack down on anti-critical race theory parental revolts, has been a roiling cold war waged by the ruling class against us “deplorables” and our political “wrong-think.”
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On Thursday, a federal judge ruled against a planned sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming, without evidence, that the leases would be damaging to the environment.
As reported by CNN, the Biden Administration made an effort to shut down all oil and gas leases across the country shortly after Biden came to power, with an executive order on January 27th indefinitely halting all new permits for such leases, pending a “rigorous review” of fossil fuel development programs. However, a lawsuit filed by 13 states ultimately led to a federal court in Louisiana blocking Biden’s order, allowing the sale of 80 million acres to move forward in November.
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The Biden administration advanced a federal review of the impact of leasing public waters for offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday.
The review is part of President Joe Biden’s goal to permit at least 30 gigawatts of offshore wind production by 2030, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced. BOEM will study the environmental impacts of wind farm leases across a 30-million-acre swath of ocean that stretches from the Mississippi River to the U.S.-Mexico border off the coast of Texas.
“The Gulf of Mexico is well-positioned to support a transition to a renewable energy future, as much of the infrastructure already exists to support offshore wind development in the region,” said BOEM Director Amanda Lefton.
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