On March 31, a committee of Trump-appointed officials voted to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from protections under the Endangered Species Act. The God Squad, so named because of its power to decide whether a species lives or dies, has convened only three other times since the landmark law was enacted over 50 years ago to prevent plant and animal extinctions.
“It’s not going to be like the wild, wild west under this order,” Bracewell’s Seth Barsky, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Justice Department, told Canary Media.
Barsky said that a key reason for lifting the Endangered Species Act requirements was to shield oil and gas developers from having to potentially meet new environmental regulations that could force them to shut down. The God Squad decision gives drillers certainty that the status quo will stick, he added.
