U.S. Oil and Gas Permits Delayed After Federal Court Ruling

Permits to drill for oil and gas on U.S. public land will be delayed after a federal judge ruled against the Biden administration’s estimates of the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions, the Interior Department said Saturday.

At issue is a 2021 executive order directing federal agencies weighing environmental permitting and regulatory decisions to consider a metric for estimating the societal costs from carbon dioxide associated with those moves. A Louisiana-based federal district judge last week blocked federal agencies from using that “social cost of carbon” plan, following a lawsuit by Louisiana and other states challenging the way it was imposed.