Eighty million acres of the Gulf of Mexico — an area twice the size of Florida — was put on the auction block on Wednesday.
Environmentalists decried the lease auction.
Shortly after taking office, Biden announced a temporary pause on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, pending a review of their impact on the worsening climate crisis.
Earlier this summer, a federal judge in Louisiana sided with those states, issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction.
Energy prices are soaring as the world’s economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In truth, oil prices are global, and often determined by how much crude the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries sells in the market.
“It simply does not make sense to put oil company profits over the future of an inhabitable planet,” said Christy Goldfuss, senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.