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The ‘God Squad’ Waives Environmental Rules for Offshore Drilling
The panel voted to override Endangered Species Act restrictions on oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, home to critically endangered whales and other imperiled wildlife.
Reporting from Washington
A powerful panel of Trump administration officials voted unanimously on Tuesday to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.
The panel, the Endangered Species Committee, a high-level group that is often called the God Squad because it essentially holds the power to decide whether a species lives or dies, adopted the move during a brief, closed-door meeting at the Interior Department.
Until Tuesday, the God Squad had convened only three times, and never in the past three decades.
It was the Trump administration’s latest move to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent plant and animal extinctions. In November, the administration proposed to relax restrictions on drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.
To justify the sweeping decision on Tuesday, administration officials said that protections for endangered species had hindered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump calls the Gulf of America. They said that lifting these protections would increase domestic energy supplies and bolster national security.
“When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the meeting.
“Recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative,” Mr. Hegseth said, although he clarified that these concerns predated the Middle East war and the resulting spike in gasoline prices.
The United States is the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, and the Gulf accounts for about 15 percent of U.S. crude oil output.
Environmentalists strongly rejected the administration’s claims.
“This is nonsensical,” said Jane Davenport, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group. “Oil and gas activities in the Gulf have been proceeding apace, and there is not a shred of evidence that the E.S.A. has resulted in any restrictions on the amount of oil produced there,” she said, referring to the Endangered Species Act.
The act requires federal agencies to ensure that activities like drilling are not “likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of a species. But the God Squad can grant exemptions to the law for activities deemed essential to national security, even if they risk extinguishing a species.
Congress created the obscure but influential committee in 1978. It is led by the interior secretary and composed of five other officials: the agriculture secretary, the Army secretary, and the heads of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The God Squad met most recently in 1992, when it granted an exemption for logging that would have harmed the northern spotted owl. (The request for the exemption was ultimately withdrawn.)
The Trump administration restricted in-person attendance at Tuesday’s meeting but live streamed the proceedings on YouTube. Dozens of environmentalists joined a protest outside the Interior Department, where they chanted, wore animal costumes and held up handwritten si
Some signs read “Stop the God Squad” and “Save the Endangered Species Act.” Several warned that the exemption for offshore drilling could drive the critically endangered Rice’s whale to extinction.
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf, killing more than 20 percent of the Rice’s whale population. According to federal estimates, around 50 Rice’s whales remain on Earth, and they are found only in the Gulf.
Boat strikes pose a major threat to the species’ survival, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. The noise associated with oil and gas exploration can also interfere with the whales’ hearing, which they rely on to communicate and to find food and mates.
The Gulf is also home to the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the world’s smallest and most endangered species of sea turtle. Its shorelines also provide critical habitat for imperiled birds like the whooping crane and piping plover.
Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil and gas industry, welcomed the committee’s decision and defended the industry’s conservation record.
“Our industry has a long track record of protecting wildlife while developing offshore energy responsibly,” Ms. Woods said in a statement. “Over the long term, American energy leadership depends on getting that balance right through reasonable, science-based protections while meeting growing energy demand.”
Past meetings of the God Squad have included lengthy testimony from biologists, ecologists and other scientists who have studied the species at issue. For instance, discussions at the 1992 meeting, including a debate over statistical models on the northern spotted owl population, went on for nearly four weeks.
No outside experts were invited to Tuesday’s meeting, which lasted roughly half an hour before the vote.
What’s happening has virtually no connection with science,” said Barry Noon, an emeritus professor of wildlife ecology at Colorado State University who testified at the 1992 God Squad meeting.
“One would hope that any decisions we made about a particular species or an entire ecological system would be well-informed by data,” Dr. Noon said.
The God Squad’s decision, adopted in a voice vote, is final and not subject to a public comment period. But a legal battle over the move is still unfolding.
The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, has sued the Trump administration over the convening of the committee. The lawsuit argues that the administration failed to follow procedures required by the Endangered Species Act, such as specifying who requested the exemption.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the Interior Department made several changes to the way that agencies apply the Endangered Species Act. But on Monday, a federal judge struck down some of those changes, saying the agency had overstepped its authority.
The second Trump administration is now working to finalize fresh changes to the law’s implementation. That process is expected to conclude by the end of the year.
Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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