GULF OF MEXICO — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management sold 25 offshore drilling leases covering 141,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico at record-low royalty rates on March 11. The sales are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to expand fossil fuel extraction in U.S. waters, with the Department of the Interior releasing plans to lease up to 1.27 billion acres of public waters for offshore drilling.

President Donald Trump signaled the administration's direction in his second inaugural address. "We will drill, baby, drill," Trump said. The administration has since rescinded key regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act and exempted Gulf of Mexico drilling projects from Endangered Species Act requirements. On March 9, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released an estimate of undiscovered oil and gas reserves in U.S. waters, two days before the lease sale.

The bureau also approved the Kaskida ultra-deep drilling project southwest of New Orleans, which could produce 80,000 barrels of oil per day as early as 2029. Offshore drilling leases for public waters had been available for years, including under the Biden administration, but high regulatory costs and low oil prices had limited their attractiveness.

The Center for Biological Diversity said that implementing the leasing plans could result in more than 4,000 oil spills, excluding large-scale disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout. "These catastrophic incidents will become more likely as the Trump administration rolls back offshore drilling safety rules," the organization said.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster — a blowout on BP's drilling rig in 2010 that killed eleven workers and sent oil gushing from the seafloor — was capped three months later, after releasing 780 million litres of crude oil. It was the largest marine oil spill in history. The disaster led to new offshore drilling regulations in the United States, and oil companies subsequently shifted exploration to deep-water deposits in the southern Caribbean and the West African coast.

Deep-sea biologist Erik Cordes had studied coral ecosystems in the Gulf's Mississippi Canyon lease area since September 2009. When researchers returned after the spill, coral structures were covered in gray scum, and a mixture of oil, plankton, and chemical dispersant had rained onto the seafloor. Cordes shifted his focus from studying undisturbed biodiversity to assessing damage.

Since the spill, Cordes's team has monitored nearly 300 individual coral colonies within 16 kilometres of the site, recording changes in color, branch lengths, and physical integrity. According to his estimates, 25 percent have either died or show no signs of recovery, with some likely centuries old. A project researcher found that colonies died when more than half of their surfaces were covered by petrochemical residue.

"The more drilling we do, the more oil we're going to release into the environment. It's really that simple," Cordes said. In the past fifty years, North American waters experienced three major oil spills: Ixtoc I in 1979, Exxon Valdez in 1989, and Deepwater Horizon in 2010.