Construction crews are putting the last touches on a 20-storey oil platform at a Texas dock. This month it will be towed 75 miles off the coast of Louisiana to suck 100,000 barrels a day from an undersea oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico.

The project operated by Shell is one of several new multibillion-dollar projects that will start pumping crude from federal waters offshore this year. How many will follow in the future is a treacherous question facing President Joe Biden’s administration.

This month the administration set out proposals for new oil lease auctions in federally-controlled waters over the next five years. The government’s options range from as many as 10 lease sales in the Gulf, plus another off Alaska, to holding no new lease sales at all.