A federal appeals court vacated a lower court’s injunction that since last summer has prevented the Biden administration from carrying out President Joe Biden‘s order to impose a pause on all new oil and gas leasing.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s preliminary injunction, which he handed down in June 2021, that stopped Biden’s leasing pause from being carried out was too vague and technically deficient. The panel also remanded the decision back to Doughty’s court, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
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The judges’ ruling quoted Doughty’s order, which enjoined and restrained the administration “from implementing the Pause of new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters” in accordance with an executive order Biden signed during his first week in office. Biden had promised on the campaign trail to end oil and gas leasing, as well as drilling, on federal lands and waters.
The Biden administration subsequently appealed Doughty’s ruling to the 5th Circuit, and the court found deficiencies with Doughty’s order, particularly in the fact that his order did not define the word “pause.”
“The order enjoins implementation of the ‘pause’ but does not define that term. The district court’s accompanying memorandum defines the pause without precision, leading the parties to differ in their interpretation of the pause’s breadth,” the court’s ruling read.
“We cannot reach the merits of the Government’s challenge when we cannot ascertain from the record what conduct — an unwritten agency policy, a written policy outside of the Executive Order, or the Executive Order itself — is enjoined,” the court also said.
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The ruling has implications for the battle between Biden and environmental groups that want his administration to be more aggressive and end federal oil and gas leasing.
The administration has carried out one offshore lease sale and one series of onshore lease sales covering acreage in different states since Biden took office, citing Doughty’s ruling saying it can’t pause new leasing.
Green groups and congressional Democrats just notched a major win with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for green energy and greenhouse gas emissions-reducing activities.
At the same time, climate hawks in Congress had to concede to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) demands favoring more traditional fossil fuel production. The law includes new, explicit directives for the Interior Department to oversee consistent oil and leasing on federal lands and waters.
