Tony Irish, a former associate solicitor with the Interior Department and now senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told Utility Dive in an email, “Interior’s recent filings upend not only the settled expectations of Congress with regards to their permitting deal, but those of producers of energy of all forms.”
Irish said it was “outrageous for [Interior] Secretary [Doug] Burgum to take active energy production off the grid in New England as winter approaches and the oil and gas market remains in flux” and noted that the federal Endangered Species Committee in March exempted Gulf oil and gas activities from Endangered Species Act protection.