Washington (August 26, 2025) – Today, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, House Natural Resources Ranking Member Jared Huffman (CA-02), Vice Ranking Member Sarah Elfreth (MD-03), and Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee Ranking Member Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) today wrote to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) urging the agency to reject BP’s proposed Kaskida project in the Gulf of Mexico.
“This ultra-deepwater project represents an unacceptable threat to Gulf communities, ecosystems, and the climate, and BP’s application fails to meet basic regulatory standards required for federal approval,” wrote the lawmakers.
“Approving Kaskida would not only endanger lives and the Gulf ecosystem – it would also set a dangerous precedent for a new era of ultra-deep, high-risk drilling in the Gulf.” The lawmakers continue, “Fifteen years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we know the cost of safety shortcuts and weak oversight: workers’ lives lost, livelihoods destroyed, and ecosystems scarred. BOEM has a duty to ensure that no project moves forward without meeting basic standards of safety, environmental protection, and public transparency. Kaskida falls short on every front.”
Ultra-deepwater drilling takes place under extreme conditions, under far higher pressure and temperature than current deep-water drilling. “These extreme conditions make the Kaskida project inherently more dangerous, heightening the likelihood of equipment failure and uncontrolled blowouts,” the lawmakers warn. BP’s own proposal estimates that a blowout at the Kaskida project could result in a catastrophic oil spill of up to four million barrels – comparable to BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Yet BP has not shown it has the required qualifications to operate in these conditions or necessary equipment to contain a disastrous high-pressure spill. “These deficiencies alone warrant application denial under BOEM’s own regulations,” state the lawmakers.
Senator Markey has long been an opponent of offshore drilling off the East Coast, leading his colleagues in calling on the Trump administration to protect the coastlines of the United States from offshore oil drilling in 2017 and introducing legislation to prohibit the Interior Secretary from revising the approved offshore drilling plan to open up new areas to drilling. He was the leading congressional investigator into the BP oil spill. In 2010, as then-Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, he led a bipartisan Congressional delegation to the Gulf of Mexico to assess the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its impacts. Senator Markey also chaired the first congressional hearing on Deepwater Horizon to investigate the spill. Senator Markey succeeded in getting major provisions of his oil spill legislation included in the bipartisan Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022, which was included in the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the Fiscal Year 2023. Senator Markey is a cosponsor of the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act, which would prevent any new or renewed leases for the exploration, development, or production of oil, natural gas, or any other mineral in the Arctic Ocean Planning Area.
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