WASHINGTON—As oil and gas exploration in the western Gulf of Mexico resumes following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, companies and federal regulators are facing a new reality: Environmentalists are gearing up for a legal fight.
Though federal regulators have revamped safety regulations following the spill, environmental groups say they are not satisfied with the changes, signaling that even drilling plans approved under a new federal regime could face legal delays.
"Is there likely to be litigation over new drilling permits? You bet there is," said David Petit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
So far the administration has approved one new deep-water exploration plan, submitted by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, since it lifted a moratorium on deep-water drilling in October. Seven more are under review, including plans from Hess Corp., Statoil ASA, Nexen Inc., BHP Billiton Ltd. and Newfield Exploration Co.
The number of environmental lawsuits related to such plans "is going to change significantly," agreed Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group representing offshore oil and gas companies.
From 2001 to 2009, the Minerals Management Service, which oversaw offshore drilling, faced just three suits under the National Environmental Policy Act, a common basis for environmental suits, according to data from the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That compares to at least 388 similar suits filed against the U.S. Forest Service and 128 filed against the Bureau of Land Management, which oversee timber production and onshore oil drilling, respectively, during the same period.
Though environmental groups file suits under other laws, the relatively small amount of suits targeting the agency overseeing offshore drilling indicates that environmental groups had been focused on other issues.
That trend looks likely to shift, considering environmental groups' response to the only deep-water exploration plan approved by regulators following the Deepwater Horizon disaster: Shell's proposal to drill three wells off the Louisiana coast.
"We'll definitely litigate it," Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said of the federal approval of Shell's plan. "It's patently illegal."
"It's like the Macondo incident never happened," added Mr. Petit of the NRDC.
Federal regulators have three choices for reviewing an exploration plan: They can exempt it from an environmental review, evaluate the plan and decide that it will have "no significant impact" on the environment, or conduct a detailed analysis of the plan's environmental impact.
Previously, the Minerals Management Service had regularly taken the first option, approving exploration plans with relatively little environmental analysis.
For Shell's plan, regulators took the middle route, evaluating the plan and finding it would have no significant impact. "It is reasonable to conclude that an accidental spill event is not very likely to occur," they wrote, citing the fact that spills had been rare in the Gulf before Deepwater Horizon and saying the Obama administration has improved oversight by establishing new rules on well design, spill containment and workplace safety.
But environmental groups want regulators to take the third, most rigorous option. Among other things, the groups say regulators underestimated the odds of another major oil spill occurring as a result of drilling the wells.
Had regulators decided the odds were greater, they may have been forced to conduct a wider environmental review, delaying the project at a time when the Obama administration is under intense political pressure to allow drilling in the Gulf to resume.
Shell has already begun drilling one of three exploration wells described in its plan. It also has another deep-water Gulf exploration plan pending. "We are confident in not only the strength of our plan, but in the responsible nature of our deep-water operations," a Shell spokeswoman said.
In the months following the Deepwater Horizon explosion last year, oil companies filed a raft of suits to try to force the Obama administration to act more quickly on drilling permits. Though the litigation may have contributed to political pressure on the administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, which has replaced the Minerals Management Service, did not issue a permit directly because of them.
Whether the environmental challenges to the bureau's new regulatory regime will have a similar impact is unclear.
"The mere fact that a lawsuit is being filed and that there are allegations in the lawsuits does not mean they are right and does not mean that there are real weaknesses in the regulatory system," Michael Bromwich, the director of the ocean energy bureau and a defender of the new permitting regime, said last week.
"We get sued almost literally every day on both sides of the issue," Mr. Bromwich said. "Sometimes I draw comfort from the fact that I am getting hammered from both sides, because if I weren't I would think that I'm doing something wrong."‹
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