July 18, 2024

DENVER – On July 16, 2024, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), State of Wyoming, and Western Energy Alliance won another significant victory in court as the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia further upheld the first oil and natural gas lease sales of the Biden Administration in June 2022, in particular, the Wyoming sale. Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, soundly rejected the Wilderness Society’s request to cancel leases, instead finding that BLM must simply correct some deficiencies in the environmental analysis that formed the basis of the sale. Judge Cooper’s decision comes on the heels of his decision in March in a separate but related case upholding BLM’s greenhouse gas (GHG) analysis underpinning the sale of 162 leases in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado.

The Alliance’s intervention in the case to support BLM was pivotal, as the judge relied heavily on the trade association’s arguments regarding the environmental issues at stake, namely underground aquifers, Greater Sage-Grouse, and big game migration corridors. The case involved only minor technicalities related to GHG analysis, as Judge Cooper had already affirmed BLM’s climate change analysis in the March ruling for all BLM 2022 sales. The Alliance was represented by Bret Sumner and Malinda Morain of Beatty & Wozniak PC.

“After President Biden’s unlawful ban on leasing was overturned in court in 2021, the first sales weren’t held until June 2022. Anti-oil-and-gas groups like the Wilderness Society that want absolutely no development absolutely anywhere immediately sued even though there had not been prior leasing under Biden,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance. “While we helped BLM successfully defend all the sales in the larger case, we had not intervened in this particular Wyoming case. Luckily, we were granted intervention as the judge considered the remedy for deficiencies in BLM’s NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) analysis. We were able to show the court that Wyoming and federal regulations and industry practices already protect groundwater, sage grouse, and big game; that lease cancelation is not necessary; and that the environmental analysis paperwork can be corrected within a reasonable time period. The judge agreed and has given BLM 180 days to correct the record. The NEPA deficiencies are all related to better documenting how federal and state regulations along with industry practices protect groundwater and species.”

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