More than 29 million hectares of the Gulf of Mexico will be auctioned in the United States for sale to oil and gas companies.
The US Department of the Interior has proposed to put up for sale the territory of the central and western parts of the Gulf of Mexico. The size of the plot is comparable to the area of the territory of Italy. It is planned to build drilling projects there that will last for decades. Auctions are held contrary to Biden’s election promise to stop drilling on federal lands and waters, writes The Guardian.
In total, almost 30 million hectares will be made available to oil and gas companies. The decision was made less than a month before the 13th anniversary of the oil spill disaster on the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the US government, more than 1 billion barrels of oil can be produced at the site over the next 50 years.
Earlier, the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow project – drilling in the remote tundra of the Arctic part of Alaska, which will extract more than 600 million barrels of oil over its entire life.