July 29, 2019 — A federal lawsuit filed last year calling on the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess the impacts of oil and gas development on federally protected species and critical habitat in the Gulf of Mexico ended last week with a settlement agreement under which the service agreed to finish an assessment by November.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service is required to gauge the impacts of federally authorized oil and gas operations on species listed as threatened and endangered, as well as habitat designated as critical.
It has been 12 years since the fisheries service did such an analysis of energy development in the Gulf, called a “biological opinion.” That opinion was intended to cover the five-year period from 2007 to 2012.
After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in 2010, the Department of Interior requested that the fisheries service update its 2007 opinion, taking the huge resulting oil spill into consideration. The assessment process began in 2013, but an updated opinion still hasn’t been issued.