Federal Judge Partially Blocks Wyoming Oil and Gas Project

Vehicles pass a welcome sign along I-25, south of Cheyenne, Wyo., on Aug. 12, 2022. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP

A federal judge has partially blocked a vast oil and gas drilling project in Wyoming, citing violations of environmental laws and ordering a reassessment of the project’s potential impacts on groundwater.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled on Sept. 13 that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other federal agencies had failed to properly evaluate the environmental consequences of the Converse County Oil and Gas Project, a 5,000-well development in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

The project, which was expected to create around 8,000 jobs and $28 billion in federal revenue, was approved in the final days of the Trump presidency. At the time, it was hailed by Republican lawmakers and BLM officials as a way of bolstering domestic energy production and independence.

Environmental groups sued to block the project, arguing that the approval process was rushed and incomplete, the drilling would degrade bird habitat, and the massive fossil fuel implications of the project ran counter to the fight against the “global climate crisis.”

Chutkan sided with the plaintiffs, finding that the BLM’s failure to properly assess the environmental effects of the project, particularly with respect to groundwater depletion, amounted to a violation of a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement that federal agencies take a “hard look” at the environmental impacts of their actions.

NEPA mandates that federal agencies, like the BLM, prepare a thorough environmental impact statement (EIS) for projects that may significantly affect the environment, ensuring adequate analysis and public disclosure of potential impacts. In her ruling, Chutkan found that BLM’s incorrect use of a “specific storage value” in its groundwater model made the environmental review deficient, in violation of NEPA rules.

The plaintiffs in the case—the Powder River Basin Resource Council and the Western Watersheds Projects—were represented by Advocates for the West, an environmental law organization. They claimed in a motion for summary judgment that the BLM’s groundwater model report was “rife with errors” and caused a “serious underestimation of drawdowns,” according to court documents.

Besides groundwater drawdown issues, the project was supposedly flawed for other reasons, according to Hannah Goldblatt, staff attorney at Advocates of the West.

“Beyond its enormous repercussions for the global climate crisis, this project will degrade the air quality of surrounding national parks and local communities, deplete already fragile water supplies, and harm one of the most cherished and imperiled species—the greater sage-grouse,” she said in a statement in September 2022, when the original complaint was filed.

The defendants—the BLM, U.S. Department of the Interior, state of Wyoming, and several energy companies—argued that the BLM had exercised its discretion to estimate the specific storage value of 0.001 (which the plaintiffs claimed was off by a factor of 10,000). The value was derived from previous studies, they said, including Powder River Basin reports from 2006 and 2014, and fell within the range of those found in scientific literature. In their view, the EIS and groundwater model were valid and complied with NEPA requirements.

Chutkan disagreed, however, noting that the BLM had repeatedly cited a 2014 report to justify the chosen specific storage value, but the values in that report were off by a factor of 10,000 from the one used in the model. Citing this discrepancy, the judge ruled that the BLM had failed to provide a rational explanation for its decision and that the environmental impact study was flawed.

The court’s decision mandates further review of groundwater depletion concerns and halts the issuance of new drilling permits until the project undergoes additional environmental analysis.

The ruling comes as a significant victory for the environmental groups that sued to block the project, which they argued was part of a “stampede to fast-track fossil fuel production” in Wyoming.

The Epoch Times has reached out with requests for comment on the ruling to the BLM, Advocates of the West, and the Powder River Basin Resource Council.