Judge halts BLM Wyoming oil and gas lease sale

A federal judge in Washington last month (Mar. 22) put on hold a 2022 Biden administration giant oil and gas lease sale covering some 128,000 acres of federal land, mostly in Wyoming.

The sale consisted of federal acreage in six parcels: Wyoming, 119,564 acres; Montana and the Dakotas, 3,406 acres; Nevada, 2,560 acres; Colorado, 2,444 acres; New Mexico, 521 acres; Oklahoma, 15 acres.

Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia ruled that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to adequately assess “the Wyoming sale’s impact on groundwater and wildlife,” specifically mule deer and the sage grouse, and how BLM’s analysis of greenhouse gas emissions “influenced its leasing decisions.” He also slammed BLM’s analysis of the impact of greenhouse gases.

On the other hand, Cooper rejected other claims in the case brought by the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups when BLM conducted the six lease sales. He said he was “unpersuaded by several other challenges, including that BLM failed to consider a reasonable slate of alternatives when setting the Wyoming lease sale’s scope. A split decision is thus in order.”

Among the environmentalist claims that Cooper also rejected was that BLM’s analysis understated how hydraulic fracking would local groundwater resources.

Cooper said he “will await another round of briefing before fashioning an appropriate remedy.” Among the remedies could be an order invalidating the sales entirely, although that is not certain.

The case dates to early 2021, when the new Biden administration told BLM to put a hold on oil and gas lease sales, as the Trump administration’s BLM had pushed for aggressive sales. Cooper noted, “That momentary ‘pause’ came to a sudden halt in June 2021 when a judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana preliminarily enjoined BLM “from implementing the [p]ause of new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters….”

As the new BLM planned to resume sales, another judge in the same circuit (the most conservative in the nation) added some legal brush strokes, enjoining Interior from considering the costs of greenhouse gas emissions in its analysis. That caused BLM to delay the sale again.

The sale took place in June 2022. Environmental groups, led by Wilderness, and including Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups, sued immediately.

In looking at how Interior factored in greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental analysis, Cooper hammered BLM for giving with one hand and taking away with the other. BLM conducted an analysis, using the social cost of carbon, that found significant costs. Cooper wrote, “After projecting the emissions and their social costs, though, the Bureau did not explain why it believed that a lease sale of this magnitude was nonetheless worthwhile and consistent with its statutory duties to steward federal lands for the public benefit. Rather, the Bureau appeared to back away from its analysis of GHG emissions when justifying its decision to move forward.”

Cooper concluded. “If, in fact, the Wyoming Office did not consider GHG emissions when rendering its decision on the challenged lease sale, it would appear to have overlooked what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today.”

BLM, he wrote, should not have decided “to overlook GHGs and their corresponding social costs entirely. The Bureau instead should have done exactly what the [National Environmental Policy Act] regulations counsel in this context: assess the merits and demerits of the proposed action in qualitative terms and provide a reasoned explanation for the basis of its decision.”

The environmental activist law firm Earthjustice represented the environmental groups in the suit. Wilderness Society attorney Ben Tettlebaum said, “While BLM is making considerable strides to safeguard critical conservation values, this decision affirms that much work remains.” He added, “Importantly, the court’s ruling shows that the agency must factor into its leasing decisions the enormous costs that greenhouse gas emissions stemming from its oil and gas program impose on public land resources and on the communities that depend on them for clean air and water.”

Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said, “This ruling underscores that federal agencies simply cannot ignore climate, wildlife, and water impacts when analyzing the myriad risks of oil and gas leasing, whether in Wyoming or across the country.”

Neither BLM nor Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill, who intervened in support of the BLM leases, commented on Cooper’s decision.

–Kennedy Maize

kenmaize@gmail.com

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