Several high-ranking Trump officials who make up the so-called “God team” voted on Tuesday to repeal the old Endangered Species Act in the Gulf of Mexico, freeing up oil and gas drilling. It’s a result that environmentalists fear could spell doom for the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a species found in the Gulf with only 50 whales left.
The “God Panel” is a group of six high-ranking government officials on the Endangered Species Committee that has the authority to decide on exemptions from the Endangered Species Act. It got that name because the committee has the power to play God.
“It really has the power of life or death,” said Pat Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law School, who helped write the first exemption provision into law. It can provide a release that can actually lead to the extinction of a species.
Such exemptions from the Endangered Plant Act are extremely rare. Tuesday marks only the fourth time in history the committee has voted, and the first time it has voted to release on national security grounds.
Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requested an exemption from Endangered Species Act requirements for all oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico “for reasons of national security.”
Hegseth said at Tuesday’s meeting that the threat to national security is a result of environmental group lawsuits aimed at protecting endangered species in the Gulf. The groups have sued in recent years, aiming to slow down boat traffic in the area that can hit and kill Rice’s whales and to stop the use of seismic air guns that can disrupt whale movement and communication. Oil spills also pose a threat to species; a government study found that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2011 killed about 17% of Rice’s whales, even though it occurred outside their habitat.
President Donald Trump has complained loudly about the environmental risks to whales caused by offshore wind farms, saying wind turbines are “crazy” and leading to whale deaths up and down the Atlantic coast. Federal scientists have found no link between wind farms and whale deaths.
Rice’s whale is the closest species to extinction in the Gulf, but other endangered and threatened species also live there, including sea turtles, manatees and whooping cranes.
The reasons given by Hegseth and other Trump officials for the release were that these charges and environmental regulations to protect endangered species make it uncertain that oil and gas companies plan and carry out their drilling operations – thus undermining US national security.
“These legal battles are draining critical government resources and making it impossible for energy companies to design and invest in new projects,” Hegseth said. “When development in the Gulf is cold, we are prevented from generating the energy we need as a country.”
Hegseth is linked to US military preparedness, citing the ongoing war with Iran initiated by the Trump administration. The conflict has caused serious global concern as Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and effectively cut off a fifth of the world’s oil supply, and countries in the Middle East have opened fire on oil and gas facilities. Trump administration officials have argued that the US needs to produce more oil to stabilize the global economy, as energy analysts have pointed out that drilling more oil here alone will not solve the problem.
“Gulf oil production disruptions don’t just hurt us; they benefit our rivals,” Hegseth said. We cannot allow our laws to weaken our position and strengthen those who want to harm us.
The American Petroleum Institute did not hold the administration accountable for the release and is independent of the Trump administration on national security issues, an industry source said.
“Our industry has a long record of protecting wildlife while responsibly developing offshore energy,” API spokeswoman Andrea Woods said in a statement.
Environmental groups have said they will sue to challenge the administration’s action, saying it is against the law.
“There is no reasonable way to say that national security interests require repeal of the Gulf of Mexico Endangered Species Act,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at the environmental group Earthjustice. Caputo argued that current oil and gas development is not subject to Endangered Species Act regulations; the law has not been used as a reason to deny oil and gas permits in the Gulf.
The God Squad has had a mixed voting record over the years, sometimes voting against ESA cuts and sometimes voting for them. The last election was in 1992, when the God Squad decided proceeding with a small amount of logging in Oregon’s old-growth forest that would have harmed the threatened northern owl. Environmental groups sued, and those exemptions were later revoked.
Parenteau, a law professor who helped write the Endangered Species Act’s release process, says the reasons for the administration in this current case are. weak from a legal point of view.
Because of the enormous power of the ESA exemption, there must be a very high ground to repeal it, such as the military operation in the Gulf that hurts the protection of the species, Parenteau said.
“This is too good to be true in terms of the allegations; this is the worst basis they could have come up with,” he said. “The whole idea that the pending case could interfere with Gulf oil and gas production – talk about speculation.”
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