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Environmental campaigners have sued Donald Trump’s administration in an attempt to block its first auction of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, setting up a legal test of plans to expand drilling in US coastal waters.
Several green groups allege the interior department failed to carry out necessary environmental reviews prior to arranging a sale of leases covering 80mn acres, according to a lawsuit filed in Washington federal court.
The lawsuit alleges approval of the proposed lease sale is “unlawful” and “capricious” because Matthew Giacona, a former lobbyist for the energy industry and now acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, participated in the decision-making process.
“Upon his hiring by the bureau in March 2025, the Department of the Interior ethics office specifically instructed Mr Giacona to recuse himself from matters that would trigger federal impartiality rules,” alleges the lawsuit.
Giacona’s involvement shows “the Gulf lease sale was arbitrary and capricious and without observance of procedure required by law”.
Before joining the Trump administration, Giacona worked as vice-president of government affairs for the National Ocean Industries Association, which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas companies and other businesses that do offshore work.
His appointment to the top job at the bureau, a unit of the interior department, prompted Democratic members of Congress to seek an investigation into whether Giacona violated federal ethics rules by participating in matters related to his prior lobbying work.
The proposed lease sale is attracting strong interest from oil producers, with Shell and Chevron confirming they plan to bid to expand their footprint in an oil basin that produces 14 per cent of US crude.
Trump has prioritised offshore oil drilling as part of his drive to boost US energy production. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” within hours of taking office in January and overturned Joe Biden-era restrictions on drilling.
In August his administration ordered twice-yearly oil and gas lease sales until 2039 in the Gulf and has recently proposed reopening waters off coastal California and Alaska to oil and gas drilling.
Green campaigners argue developing new oil and gas projects in offshore waters harms the climate and raises the risks of accidents. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 in the Gulf killed 11 workers and caused a catastrophic spill.
Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm, filed the suit on behalf of several environmental groups including Friends of the Earth, Healthy Gulf, the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club.
“If you’re going to auction off 80mn acres of our public waters to the oil industry, the least you can do is not break the law in a plethora of ways as you do it,” George Torgun, an Earthjustice senior attorney, said on Tuesday. “These are the very environmental laws that Congress passed decades ago in response to the destructive consequences of offshore oil drilling.”
The American Petroleum Institute said offshore energy projects undergo multiple layers of environmental review over the course of their development, ensuring safety and environmental protection remain top priorities.
It said: “Congress’s decision to establish a legislated leasing programme simply streamlines early-stage procedures without changing the rigorous environmental standards that apply before any production occurs.”
The Department of the Interior declined to comment. Giacona did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Financial Times.
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