Environmental groups sue Biden administration to halt its largest onshore
Environmental law group Earthjustice filed the complaint on behalf of the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth in DC District Court on Wednesday against Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Bureau of Land Management. The complaint was shared first with CNN.
The groups are targeting the Wyoming sale because of its size; of the 130,000 acres of federal land being offered to oil and gas companies, around 120,000 acres are in Wyoming.
“The Wyoming [sale] is by far the largest,” said Mike Freeman, senior attorney at Earthjustice and the lead attorney in the case. “What they’ve done in every state but Wyoming is keep the lease sale really small.”
The legal fight has now moved to dry land.
A spokesperson for the Department of Interior declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Even with the reduction in size, Freeman said Earthjustice is suing because the government failed to adequately consider the environmental cost of the sales.
“The agency acknowledged that production and combustion of oil and gas developed on the leases could generate huge volumes of greenhouse gases and could result in billions of dollars in social and environmental costs,” the complaint states, adding that BLM could have offered less land in Wyoming as it did in other states.
“What this sale will do is lock in about 188 square miles of public lands for oil and gas for the long-term,” Freeman said. “There’s a fundamental disconnect with what they’re doing with their lease sale and what they’ve committed on climate.”
Gas-price politics
Interior’s longstanding oil and gas leasing program has been a political hot spot for the administration since Biden took office and vowed to end new drilling leases.
Biden’s temporary pause on new leases was challenged by Republicans in court, which prompted the massive Gulf of Mexico lease sale. Then, that sale was stopped and invalidated…
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