Environmental Activists Continue Disruption of Oil and Gas Auctions







Environmentalists who say the Gulf of Mexico is their next front in the fight against oil and gas drilling made their point recently by protesting a federal auction of the oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. About 300 climate activists staged a demonstration at the Louisiana Superdome calling it their “Keep It in the Ground” movement.

“We want to stop these lease sales,” said Cherri Foytlin, one local environmental activitist. “As long as these leases go through, it’s tying us to an archaic economy and an archaic way of doing things that is destroying our earth.”

Environmentalists have staged similar rallies and protests at lease auctions in Colorado, Nevada and Utah.

“Today we sent a message to the oil industry,” said Ann Rolfes, founder of the environmental justice group Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Despite the disruption, the auction was carried out and bids were taken covering nearly 694,000 acres. The bids covered $156 million.

The protest came a week after the Obama administration announced a new plan for offshore oil and gas leasing which also declared the Atlantic Coast off limits to drililng over the next five years.

No one was arrested in Louisiana with a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Management explaining that the agency respects the right of peaceful protest. In years past, some environmentalists protested by successfully bidding on land. In 2008, an activist bid $1.8 million at a Utah auction and won the bid, but didn’t have the money for the leasing rights to drill on 14 parcels of land. Tim DeChristopher ended up spending 21 months in prison after being hit with a federal felony filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.