Federal Judge Halts New Drilling Permits for Massive Wyoming Oil Project
(Reuters) — A federal judge on Friday blocked new oil drilling permits from being granted for a 5,000-well oil and gas development project in Wyoming that was approved in the waning days of Republican former President Donald Trump's administration.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., agreed with two environmental groups that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management conducted a flawed assessment of how the Converse County Oil and Gas Project would affect groundwater supplies before approving it in December 2020.
The agency had approved developing up to 5,000 new oil and natural gas wells within a 1.5 million-acre area in Converse County, Wyoming, over a decade. The project is backed by energy companies including Devon Energy and Continental Resources.
Two environmental groups, the Powder River Basin Council and Western Watersheds Project, sued in 2022, calling the project a "capstone" of efforts by the Trump administration to relieve the fossil fuel industry from environmental safeguards.
They argued the project would lock in "staggering" amounts of new greenhouse gas emissions that could contribute to climate change and be detrimental to wildlife living in the area.
Chutkan in Friday's ruling sided with them in finding that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires agencies to assess the environmental effects of proposed projects before approving them.
Before approving the project, BLM issued an environmental impact statement analyzing the project's anticipated effects on the environment, including ground water supplies and the change in water level that would result from well pumping.
Chutkan, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the time noted that BLM's analysis potentially underestimated the extent of water level change.
She said BLM failed to justify why it relied on data from a 2014 report prepared by a contractor that she said potentially understated the project's impact on groundwater by at least a factor of 10,000.
Chutkan held off on overturning the approval of the Wyoming project at the request of the state and the federal government, saying she would benefit from further briefing on what remedy was appropriate.
But Chutkan enjoined BLM from approving further drilling permits for the project in the interim while she decided whether to vacate the project's approval.
"We hope BLM will take this opportunity to get its analysis right and adequately protect Converse County's water, air, and wildlife from this massive drilling project," said Sarah Stellberg, a lawyer for the environmental groups at Advocates for the West.
BLM declined to comment. Devon and Continental did not respond to requests for comment.
The case is Powder River Basin Resource Council, et al, v. U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 22-cv-02696.
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