Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management

On February 6, 2021, the court issued an injunction on certain construction activities through February 20 or until the Ninth Circuit rules on any motions for injunction pending appeal. The district court noted that the application of the NPRPA’s judicial review provision was one of first impression in the Ninth Circuit. The court further indicated that if the claim is not time-barred, the plaintiffs “could well be likely to succeed on the merits” of their claim that the defendants’ analysis of greenhouse gas emissions violated NEPA. The court also concluded that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of irreparable harm.

On February 1, 2021, the federal district court for the District of Alaska denied motions for preliminary relief barring certain construction activities related to a major oil and gas development project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). First the court found that the plaintiffs’ NEPA claims were likely time-barred under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act (NPRPA), which requires that actions seeking judicial review under NEPA “concerning oil and gas leasing” in NPR-A be brought within 60 days after notice of the availability of an environmental impact statement is published in the Federal Register. With respect to claims under the Endangered Species Act, the court found that that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears would be irreparably injured before the court issued a ruling on the merits.

Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Alaska challenging BLM’s approval of the Willow Master Development Plan, which the plaintiffs alleged is a “massive oil and gas development project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska” that poses “a threat to the global climate and an already dramatically warming Arctic region.” (Six other organizations previously filed a <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/sovereign-inupiat-for-a-living-arctic-v-bureau-of-land-management/">lawsuit</a> challenging the development plan.) The three groups also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. The complaint asserted claims under NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Under NEPA, the plaintiffs alleged, among other shortcomings, that BLM failed “to fully consider and accurately describe the magnitude and significance of greenhouse gas emissions” from the project, including by excluding foreign oil consumption from the market simulation model it used to estimate net greenhouse gas emissions from the project. The plaintiffs contended that BLM failed to disclose and analyze the effects of the project’s emissions and the significance of those emissions, ignoring “available science and well-established methods for assessing the effects of the Project’s greenhouse gas emissions,” and “misleadingly” compared the project’s emissions with total U.S. emissions. Under the Endangered Species Act, the plaintiffs alleged that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s conclusion that death or serious injury to polar bears was not likely to occur was not based on best available science and failed to consider relevant factors, including the increasing proportion of polar bears that den on land due to diminishing sea ice