BOEM’s five year plan presented one of the few recent opportunities to “vote” solely on the issue of offshore oil and gas leasing. Advocates facilitated the voting process by providing form letters for and against leasing. Both opponents and supporters are quite good at these campaigns, so neither side had a significant organizational advantage.
BOEM summarized (Table A-11 of the plan) the public comments, and I tabulated the 748,719 letters on the attached spreadsheet. The number of letters supporting oil and gas lease sales exceeded those opposed by 72,383 or 21.4%. The supporters campaign also had more breadth in that there were 49 separate campaigns vs. 45 for leasing opponents.
The NRDC demonstrated their organizational clout with the largest single campaign (107,355 letters). Denise Neal, a name that is unfamiliar to me, impressively organized the largest proponent campaign (61,122 letters).
Summary:
- letters supporting offshore oil and gas leasing: 410,551
- letters opposing offshore oil and gas leasing: 338,168
- letter campaigns supporting leasing: 49
- letter campaigns opposing leasing: 45
- largest campaign: NRDC – 107,355 letters in opposition (32% of all such letters)
- largest pro-leasing campaign: Denise Neal – 61,122 letters in support (15% of all letters in support)
Reasons for and against leasing per BOEM Table A-11:
| Reasons for supporting lease sales | Reasons for opposing lease sales |
| reduce energy costs, farming costs, prices of gasoline and other goods | climate |
| jobs | environmental justice, local communities |
| energy independence | fisheries |
| intl competitiveness | marine environment |
| national security | marine mammals |
| GoM production is lower in carbon intensity, higher US environmental stds. | fossil fuel dependency, unnecessary to meet energy needs, oppose new fossil fuel investments, leasing “would not reduce gas prices” |
| domestic oil and gas preferable during transition | oil spill risks |
| help improve supply chain | air pollution |
| help address inflation | stockpiling ocean space, energy price gouging |
Interesting contradiction: Opponents of Sale 257 argued in Federal Court that BOEM failed to consider the positive GHG effect that higher prices (the logical result of lower production) would have as a result of reduced demand. The judge agreed with that argument and vacated the sale. Some of the same groups have now commented (per the BOEM summary) that additional leasing “would not reduce gas prices.”
