U.S. regulators are striving to rewrite guidance on how to protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of a December deadline, potentially threatening oil and gas production in a region that provides 2M bbl/day of oil, or ~15% of U.S. crude output, Bloomberg reported this week.

A U.S. District Court ruled last month the U.S. government’s main Endangered Species Act analysis of oil and gas activity in the Gulf – a “biological opinion” released in 2020 detailing how drilling, pipeline construction and other operations might jeopardize protected species in the region – was flawed and did not adequately evaluate risks faced from oil spills and vessel strikes.

If regulators fail to complete their revisions by a December 20 deadline, and if courts or Congress do not intervene to provide more time, existing oil and gas operations that depend on the evaluations could stop.

Environmental groups challenged the biological opinion four years ago, and last month the judge sided with them, tossing out the biological opinion and sending it back to the National Marine Fisheries Service to be rewritten.

If a valid biological opinion is not in place by the deadline, energy regulators may be forced to consult on hundreds or perhaps thousands of decisions annually, according to data they provided the court.

The issue is causing anxiety for some Gulf operators worried not just about delayed government approvals but the viability of existing work authorized under the court-invalidated biological opinion, Bloomberg reported.

At stake are operations as varied as traffic from ships supplying offshore platforms to continued production at long-permitted wells, according to the report.

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