Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum

The federal district court for the District of Columbia declined to compel the Secretary of the Interior and two other federal officials to update environmental assessments for the decommissioning of offshore oil and gas infrastructure. The court concluded that although Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) had standing to bring the suit, the organization did not establish a discrete and mandatory duty that the court could order the defendants to perform. The court also found that the lawsuit presented an impermissible programmatic challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act. CBD’s 2024 lawsuit alleged that the Interior Department had “under-studied” environmental concerns associated with “delinquent and decommissioned-in-place infrastructure,” including “substantial risks to the Gulf, including oil spills, methane leaks, and the leaching of toxic chemicals.”

Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia alleging that the Secretary of the Interior and the directors of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement were violating NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act in their management of offshore oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico. CBD alleged that new information showed that offshore oil and gas decommissioning was not occurring within required timeframes or in accordance with requirements, leaving idle infrastructure that posed environmental and safety risks, including risks of oil spills and risks of methane emissions contributing to climate change and increasing explosion risk. The complaint described the findings of a recent report that revealed that 2,700 wells and nearly 500 platforms were overdue for decommissioning in the Gulf of Mexico as of June 2023; that nearly 600 of the idle wells had not been temporarily plugged to prevent leaks before decommissioning; and that more than 800 idle wells had been unused for more than a decade. CBD contended that substantial changes to decommissioning had occurred since programmatic environmental assessments were prepared in 1987 and 2005, including the defendants permitting 97% of pipeline mileage in the Gulf of Mexico to remain on or beneath the seafloor. They also alleged that there were substantial new circumstances and information available about the risks posed by idle infrastructure and decommissioning in place, including information about methane emissions from unplugged and temporarily plugged wells. CBD asserted that the defendants could not continue to rely on the 1987 and 2005 assessments to approve decommissioning in place, time extensions, and other deviations from decommissioning requirements. CBD asked the court to require the defendants to complete, by a date certain, new NEPA analysis to supplement the programmatic analyses prepared in 1987 and 2005.