WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2019) The Trump administration has been sued for allegedly withholding information on the dangers of oil and gas fracking in the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental group that brought the action said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration today for failing to release public documents revealing the extent and risks of fracking of offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico," the statement by the group said. "Officials have stonewalled a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Center."
A similar lawsuit in 2015 compelled the release of public records that found the Federal government permitted more than 1,600 fracks in the Gulf from 2010 to 2014, the group said.
Fracking uses toxic chemicals that can harm loggerhead sea turtles and other imperiled marine life, the statement said. It cited federal records as showing that oil companies were allowed to dump more than 76 billion gallons of drilling waste water - including fracking chemicals - into the Gulf in 2014.
"Trump appointees are covering up the oil industry's pollution of the Gulf with toxic fracking chemicals," said Miyoko Sakashita, ocean program director at the center. "We have a right to know how sea turtles, whales and other marine animals are being harmed by offshore drilling and fracking. The administration's secretive fracking approvals have made offshore drilling even more dirty and dangerous. We need full disclosure on fracking's threats to marine life, coastal communities and our climate."
The Center for Biological Diversity had also sued the administration last year for failing to study how offshore drilling impacts endangered marine life.
The group noted that federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico were where the vast majority of offshore drilling occurred in the United States. The Trump administration has also "quietly issued" more than 1,700 waivers of offshore drilling safety rules adopted after the deadly 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf, it said.
