Taking the next step in its legal battle, the state of Louisiana filed a request for a preliminary injunction in federal district court this week to temporarily halt a western Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas lease sale that is scheduled for Aug. 16.

The request for a preliminary injunction, which was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana, would delay the lease sale until the court has an opportunity to decide the outcome of the state’s lawsuit seeking to block Lease Sale 200 off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana for allegedly not conducting a proper environmental review. Judge Kurt Engelhart is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Aug. 8, Dow Jones reported.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco filed the lawsuit to stop the lease sale on July 20. The legal action came only days after Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) said it would proceed with the sale as scheduled, despite Blanco’s objections.

The complaint named MMS Director Rejane “Johnnie” Burton and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as defendants. Louisiana contends that Burton and Kempthorne would violate the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act by allowing the lease sale to occur. The state has asked the federal court to enjoin Interior from opening bids and/or awarding leases.

The request for preliminary injunction and the lawsuit are a complete about-face for Louisiana, which over the years has welcomed producers to the federal waters off its coastline. Louisiana’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) territory is considered the most extensively developed OCS territory in the entire United States, contributing billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties each year to the U.S. Treasury.

Blanco has been vowing for months to stop the oil and natural gas lease auction unless the federal government agrees to give Louisiana a greater share of the federal royalties from OCS production offshore Louisiana to help restore the state’s receding coastal areas.

Under current law, interior states that allow oil and gas drilling receive 50% of the royalties from production on federal lands. But coastal states that support offshore production, such as Louisiana, receive only a small fraction of the royalties on production from the OCS, with the bulk of the revenues going to the federal government. Blanco, as well as Louisiana’s congressional lawmakers, are seeking to change that equation.

Lease Sale 200 includes 3,865 unleased blocks of approximately 20.87 million acres in the OCS Planning Area offshore Texas and in the deeper waters offshore Louisiana. The blocks are located from three to about 210 miles offshore, according to MMS. The agency estimates the sale could result in the production of between 136 million and 262 million barrels of oil and 0.810 Tcf to 1.440 Tcf of natural gas.

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