Company: OXY-WT
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000797468-25-000029
Chunk: 131

Company: OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM CORP /DE/
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 131
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 be vacated and by which the NMFS must issue a new opinion. The NMFS may seek to impose additional conditions on offshore oil and gas and vessel activity, which could affect Occidental’s GOA exploration, development and operations, and a new opinion may be the subject of further litigation. The absence of an opinion and its associated incidental take coverage could adversely impact the ability of federal agencies to conduct lease sales and issue or modify permits and approvals and increase the risk of ESA liability for offshore oil and gas operators and contractors. 

Regarding onshore federal oil and gas leasing, in April 2024, the BLM adopted final regulations to revise its oil and gas leasing process to implement the IRA’s increases in royalty rates, rental rates and minimum bids, restrict leasing to areas with known resource potential and near existing infrastructure and avoid areas with competing uses such as recreation and conservation, increase bonding requirements, impose new requirements for temporarily abandoned wells and change the term of an approved application for permit to drill. Occidental’s subsidiaries may incur increased federal royalties and face restrictions on future potential drilling sites or infrastructure on federal lands due to these regulations.

In 2022, advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to invalidate numerous BLM drilling permits for oil and gas wells on federal lands in New Mexico and Wyoming, including certain permits obtained by Occidental subsidiaries. The plaintiffs alleged that the BLM failed to comply with NEPA and other federal statutes by not adequately addressing GHG emissions and climate change in its environmental reviews. In November 2023, the Court dismissed the case, and plaintiffs’ appeal is pending.

Litigation over NEPA environmental reviews by advocacy groups has significantly delayed federal permitting of proposed domestic energy, manufacturing and infrastructure projects, leading to increased costs, delays in financing and construction, or cancellation by project proponents, and such litigation and delays could adversely affect such projects in the future, including those involving Occidental or its subsidiaries, joint ventures or customers. In May 2024, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued final NEPA regulations directing federal agencies to consider GHG emissions and climate change in NEPA environmental reviews, which regulations are subject to pending litigation. 

Significant areas of the Permian Basin in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico are subject to current or proposed land use restrictions under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). In 2022 and May 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published final rules listing the lesser prairie chicken