Oil and gas companies want to store carbon under the Gulf of Mexico. But they must wait for the Biden administration to set the ground rules first.

The Gulf of Mexico’s depleted oil and gas fields have caught the attention of carbon storage developers, encouraged by decades of geologic studies and intent on claiming lucrative tax credits for capturing emissions from the region’s sprawling network of energy and petrochemical facilities.

But 18 months past a deadline set by Congress in 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Biden administration continues to debate how best to move ahead on creating a system for leasing and permitting carbon storage projects in federal waters. The Interior Department is still consulting with industry and counterparts in other countries and has no timeline on when its draft rule will be ready, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland testified at a Senate hearing last week.