A Louisiana judge blocked the nation’s largest oil trade organization Monday from joining a lawsuit defending the Biden administration’s offshore drilling rule.
Judge James Cain of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, rejected the American Petroleum Institute’s request to intervene in the case, which pits several oil companies against the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
Cain said that API, despite representing more than 600 oil and gas companies, missed several procedural hurdles to join the case. The judge did allow the group’s position to be included in the record via an amicus brief.
The conflict centers on offshore bonding regulation finalized by the administration earlier this year that demands additional clean up insurance from companies without a high credit rating or high volumes of oil and gas reserves. The regulation largely targets midsize oil and gas companies.
