Federal ‘God squad’ poised to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf from endangered species rules
A U.S. government panel was set to meet Tuesday for the first time since 1992 to consider exempting oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act due to unspecified national security concerns, a move that critics say could doom a rare species of whale and harm other marine life.
Dubbed “God Squad” by groups that claim they can decide the fate of a species, the Endangered Species Committee includes several Trump administration officials and is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Republican President Donald Trump has made increasing fossil fuel production a central goal of his second term. He wants to open up new areas of the Gulf, off the coast of Florida, to drilling and has proposed a radical rollback of environmental regulations little appreciated by the industry.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth informed Burgum on March 13 that an Endangered Species Act exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf was “necessary for national security reasons,” according to an administration court filing.
Government officials have not revealed the reason for the request, which comes amid global oil shocks and soaring energy prices caused by the war in Iran. Experts say the administration must specify military needs that would endanger a species to justify the national security exemption.
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the country’s major oil-producing regions. It accounts for more than 10% of the crude pumped each year in the United States, plus a small share of domestic natural gas production.
But the Gulf has also been the scene of environmental disasters such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, which killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of oil. A spill in the Gulf earlier this month spread 600 kilometers, contaminating at least six species and polluting seven protected nature reserves.
The Trump administration approved BP’s new $5 billion ultra-deepwater drilling project in the Gulf in mid-March.
Environmental groups tried unsuccessfully to block Tuesday’s meeting. They claimed an exemption would condemn the rare Rice’s whale to extinction. There are only around fifty left in the Gulf.
The judge who rejected the environmentalists’ request suggested it was premature since authorities had not yet acted on the proposed exemption.
A 2025 analysis by the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that the Gulf oil and gas program had the potential to harm several species of Gulf whales, sea turtles and sturgeons that are potentially at risk of harm from ship strikes, oil spills and other impacts.
The Endangered Species Committee was established in 1978 to exempt projects from the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits harming or killing species on a protected list if no alternative brings the same economic benefits to an area or if doing so is in the best interest of the nation.
The committee has only met three times in its 53-year history and has granted only two exemptions. The first took place in 1979 to allow the construction of a dam on the Platte River in Wyoming, home to the whooping crane. It last met in 1992, authorizing logging in northern spotted owl habitats in Oregon. This exemption request was subsequently withdrawn.
Its latest meeting follows Monday’s ruling by a federal judge that struck down attempts during Trump’s first term to weaken endangered species rules.
Committee members include the secretaries of Agriculture, Interior and Army, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Associated Press left email and phone messages with Interior and Defense Department officials seeking comment.
