Environmental groups have taken the Biden administration back to court in an attempt to stop the largest onshore oil and gas lease sale since President Joe Biden took office.
Friends of the Earth and the Wilderness Society accused the administration of violating Biden’s commitments to help abate climate change and filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday arguing that the Bureau of Land Management failed its environmental review obligations in approving the large lease sale in Wyoming. The plaintiffs asked the court to “set aside” the bureau’s record of decision approving the sale and all leases sold.
BIDEN PROMISE TO END OFFSHORE DRILLING AT STAKE WITH UPCOMING FIVE-YEAR PROGRAM
“The [environmental assessment] that [the bureau] prepared for the lease sale fails to analyze the groundwater impacts of oil and gas development on the leases being offered, instead offering only boilerplate text with generic statements about water resource impacts from oil and gas development,” the complaint says.
Michael Freeman, senior attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the plaintiff green groups, said the lease sale will not help reduce high gasoline prices.
“But it will boost profits for oil and gas companies while the American people bear the brunt of our worsening climate crisis. We are running out of time for the administration to protect our future,” Freeman said.
The Wyoming sale offers 120,000 acres and is the largest lease sale of the eight the bureau scheduled in April. Bids on the available Wyoming parcels began on Wednesday and close on Thursday.
The lease sales in the other Western states, including Utah, Montana, and New Mexico, will be carried out on Thursday.
The bureau, which had been overseeing a pause in all new lease sales in conjunction with an executive order Biden issued after taking office, scheduled the lease sales months after a judge ruled federal law requires agencies to carry out lease sales for eligible lands. Biden promised on the campaign trail to end drilling on federal lands and waters.
Biden is under competing pressures from environmental groups and some Democrats to keep to that promise and restrict oil and gas development on federal lands, while other lawmakers and industry groups lobby him to support more leasing on federal lands in response to high prices.
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Friends of the Earth has already sued the department successfully. D.C. District Judge Rudolph Contreras vacated Lease Sale 257, the lone offshore lease sale the Interior Department carried out in 2021, after the group led a suit against the sale.
The newest lawsuit coincides with the deadline Interior Secretary Deb Haaland set for the department to propose its five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program. The current program expires Thursday, and Haaland said in May that the Interior intends to propose its successor by Thursday.
