A federal judge has directed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to conduct a more thorough environmental impact analysis before auctioning nearly 120,000 acres of public land in Wyoming to the oil and gas industry, siding with conservation groups.
U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Christopher Cooper prohibited the agency from approving drilling applications for 180 days, according to the judge’s order. A separate order on the matter will follow, he said, but no date was set.
In June 2022, the Wilderness Society and other conservation groups collectively sued the agency over its plan to auction the land, claiming that it failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which requires an environmental impact assessment before large projects.
BLM’s Wyoming office finalized the 120,000-acre land lease in June 2022 after “finding no significant impact.”
“Wasting no time, the Conservation Groups filed this lawsuit that same day, raising a suite of challenges to BLM’s environmental analysis and its authorization of such a sizable sale,” the order states.
Groundwater, Wildlife, and Climate Impacts
The conservation groups argued that the BLM failed to perform a “sufficiently granular analysis of impacts to groundwater,” and that it failed to closely examine the effects on wildlife such as the sage grouse and the mule deer.“Third, the groups maintained that the Wyoming Office failed to consider a reasonable slate of alternatives, as [the National Environmental Policy Act] requires, when authorizing such a large-scale sale that far outstripped what the other BLM field offices put up for auction around the same time,” the order states.
The conservation groups’ final argument was that the agency failed to consider the effects on the climate.
The Wilderness Society
The Wilderness Society, a forest protection advocacy organization, has claimed that 90 percent of BLM land is “currently open for oil and gas leasing” and has called on the Biden administration to take public lands “off the table for oil and gas development.”“The fact that oil and gas leasing is now required before the Department of the Interior can pursue renewable projects means that it is more critical than ever that the administration deftly use its authorities to put public health and safety, climate and conservation first by adopting new regulations ensuring that any new leasing or drilling on public lands proceeds only if and when it is consistent with climate commitments,” the group stated.
Bureau of Land Management and Wilderness Society officials didn’t respond by publication time to requests for comment.
