A U.S. government panel on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said environmentalists' lawsuits against the industry threatened to hobble the nation's energy supply.
Critics said the move by the Endangered Species Committee — which had not convened in more than three decades — could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life.
Nicknamed the "God Squad" by groups who say it can decide a species' fate, the committee comprises several Trump administration officials and is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Republican President Donald Trump has made increased fossil fuel production a central focus of his second term. He wants to open new areas of the Gulf off the Florida coast to drilling, and has proposed sweeping rollbacks of environmental regulations disliked by industry.
Hegseth notified Burgum on March 13 that an Endangered Species Act exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf was "necessary for reasons of national security," according to a court filing from the administration. The request came amid global oil shocks and soaring energy prices brought on by the Iran war.
Hegseth told committee members Tuesday that Iran's efforts to block shipping through the world's busiest oil route, the Strait of Hormuz, underscored the national security imperative of a robust domestic oil production. He said the energy industry is under threat from pending litigation from environmental groups challenging government approvals for drilling.
"Disruptions to Gulf oil production doesn't hurt just us, it benefits our adversaries," Hegseth said. "We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing and strengthen those who wish to harm us. When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country and as a department."
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the nation's top oil-producing regions. It accounts for more than 10% of crude pumped annually in the U.S., plus a small share of domestic natural gas production.
But the Gulf also has been the scene of environmental disasters such as BP's Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010 that killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of oil. A spill in the Gulf earlier this month spread 373 miles (600 kilometers), contaminating at least six species and polluting seven protected natural reserves.
The Trump administration in mid-March approved BP's new $5 billion ultra-deepwater drilling project in the Gulf.
Environmental groups sought unsuccessfully to block Tuesday's meeting and have pledged to legally challenge any action by the committee. They say an exemption would doom the rare Rice's whale to extinction. Only about 50 remain in the Gulf.
"If Trump is successful here, he could be the first person in history to knowingly extirpate a species from the face of the earth. That's how precarious the condition of the Rice's whale is," said Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at Vermont Law School.
A 2025 National Marine Fisheries Service analysis determined the Gulf oil and gas program was likely to harm several species of whales, sea turtles and Gulf sturgeon that face potential harm from ship strikes, oil spills and other impacts.
The Endangered Species Committee was established in 1978 as a way to exempt projects from the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list, if no alternative would provide the same economic benefits in a region or if it was in the nation's best interest.
Before this week, the panel had convened just three times in its 53-year history and issued only two exemptions. The first was in 1979 to allow construction on a dam on the Platte River in Wyoming, home to the whooping crane. It last met in 1992, allowing logging in northern spotted owl habitats in Oregon. That exemption request was later withdrawn.
Its latest meeting follows a federal judge's ruling on Monday that struck down attempts during Trump's first term to weaken rules for endangered species.
The panel's members include the secretaries of agriculture, interior and the Army, the chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They all voted in favor of Hegseth's request for an exemption.
