In September, the Biden Administration announced the Five-Year Program for Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing  The draft program announced a year prior included 11 lease sales, one in Cook Inlet, Alaska and ten in the Gulf of Mexico. The final program included a record-low 3 lease sales, all in the Gulf of Mexico. Zero Hour’s work with the Protect All Our Coasts coalition led to nearly 4,000 supporters calling for a Five-Year Program with no new leases. Zero Hour joined the Natural Resources Defense Council and over 200 organizations to urge President Biden and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to issue a Five-Year Program with no new leases. Three lease sales, totaling millions of acres of the Gulf of Mexico, is still too many. Offshore drilling imperils coastal communities, marine life, including the critically endangered Rice’s whale, and the climate. 

The United States isn’t the only place offshore drilling is expanding. At the same time as the Biden Administration is moving forward with new leasing, United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is moving forward with the Rosebank offshore drilling project in the North Sea. In an op-ed penned by Zero Hour executive director Zanagee Artis and British climate activist Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson for Teen Vogue, they explain that, “Rosebank is a collaborative drilling project developed and operated by Equinor, Norway’s sovereign oil and gas company, which owns 80% of the project, and Ithaca Energy, which owns the remaining 20%. Resulting emissions from the combustion of oil and gas would be equivalent to the total annual CO2 emissions of the over 700 million people in the 28 nations with the lowest income globally.”

Join us in our fight to end the era of fossil fuels. Together, we can end offshore drilling everywhere.