As part of a legal brawl with Republican-led states, the Biden administration is indefinitely freezing decisions about new federal oil and gas drilling.
A recent federal ruling that blocked the way the Biden administration was calculating the real cost of climate change, a figure that guides a range of government decisions, was the reason for the move.
According to the government, the damage from floods, fires and rising sea levels was caused by carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels. President Donald J. Trump set it at $7 or less per ton. After taking office, Mr. Biden revived the $51 level and began work on updating it.
The social cost of carbon is a metric designed to highlight the economic threats from greenhouse gas emissions so they can be compared to the economic benefits from oil drilling. Climate scientists and economists say it is necessary because the costs of heat waves, storms, wildfires and flooding in the United States are not taken into account by policymakers. Fossil fuel projects could be more difficult to win federal approval if they include those costs.
The judge in the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana found that the Biden administration's calculations artificially increased the cost estimates.
Louisiana and other energy producing states would be harmed by using the social cost of carbon in decision-making, according to a judge. He stopped the administration from considering the metric. The Justice Department will appeal.
The federal government stopped work on new oil and gas leases and permits to drill on federal lands and waters after the judge's ruling.
Work surrounding public-facing rules, grants, leases, permits and other projects has been delayed or stopped altogether so that agencies can assess whether or not they can proceed, according to a legal filing by the Department of Justice.
She said the agency is committed to ensuring its programs account for climate and that delays are expected in permitting and leasing for the oil and gas programs.
States with a lot of oil and gas drilling on federal land are angry.
The lease sale for drilling across 179,001 acres in Wyoming will not happen soon. The Bureau of Land Management missed a deadline to announce the sale. The social cost of carbon metric was included in the environmental assessment for the lease sale.
The Biden administration was accused of a "lack of duty" by the Petroleum Association of Wyoming by delaying a sale that could be worth millions of dollars. Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, called the missed deadline a conscious decision to continue to attack Wyoming and our domestic energy industry in favor of progressive, unrealistic climate policies.
Senator Lummis said in a statement that Mr. Biden prioritized the agenda of radical environmentalists in his administration over the needs of people in Wyoming and the rest of the country.
The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Biden wants to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by half by the end of the decade. 25 percent of the greenhouse gases generated by the United States come from fossil fuel extraction on public land and in federal waters. Scientists say global emissions need to be halved by 2030.
Environmental activists were pleased by the pause in new leases and permits, but worried that the ruling would weaken the administration's ability to issue aggressive climate policies.
The director of government affairs for the Center for Biological Diversity said it was a mixed bag.
The Louisiana attorney general argued that Mr. Biden exceeded his authority by applying the social cost of carbon to decision-making. The attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming were with him.
The Republican attorneys general argued that using a social cost of carbon is unconstitutional because Congress never passed legislation authorizing it.
Congress has done something for decades by not passing legislation about how an administration should conduct economic analyses. The judge cited the separation of powers clause in the Constitution in a statement that was mocked by some legal experts. There is no such clause.
"That term in the opinion is one of the most embarrassing parts of a highly embarrassing opinion," said an expert on federal regulatory issues with the government watchdog group Public Citizen. He said the judge's opinion was a partisan political hit job.
The administration's work has been stopped by the decision. According to an email from the Environmental Protection Agency, the social cost of carbon is on hold, and the Justice Department warned that other policies could also be delayed. An organization opposed to addressing climate change wants the E.P.A. to take away a new regulation of vehicle emissions because of a judge's ruling.
None of the rulemakings that were challenged here will now be delayed, according to the Justice Department.
The metric being blocked is only an interim one, and the Biden administration accused Judge Cain of judicial micromanagement.
The legal spat is one of many conflicting rulings facing the administration over the issue of oil and gas drilling on public lands and in federal waters.
New federal oil and gas leases were suspended by Mr. Biden when he first took office. The Biden administration was forced to move forward with lease sales after a Louisiana federal judge ruled in favor of the states that challenged the ban. More than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico were opened to oil and gas drilling.
Environmental groups won a lawsuit to block the lease sale. A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia invalidated the sale and the leases because the Biden administration did not do enough to account for the impacts of drilling on climate change.
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