The Biden administration issued a final notice Wednesday for the lease of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore energy activity, a figure which represents a 6.4 million acre reduction from the initial proposal, Bloomberg News reported.
The 6.4 million acre reduction amounts to 9% of the initially proposed lease area from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), according to Bloomberg. The reduction follows the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) July decision to settle with environmentalist groups and move to introduce protections for the Rice’s whale species in a nearly 11 million acre swath of the Gulf.
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