Gulf of Mexico Oil Lease Sale Will Harm Rice’s Whale, Groups Say

Environmental groups pushed back against industry groups and the Interior Department in their challenge to Gulf of Mexico oil and gas Lease Sale 259, saying allowing it would ignore science and harm wildlife.

Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, and others told the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Sept. 1 that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ignored evidence of the critically endangered Rice’s whale habitat in the western and central Gulf. It instead focused only on the core habitat in the eastern part “while failing to consider current science.”

BOEM also “inaptly relies on allegedly limited ...