Friends of the Earth v. Haaland

On January 27, 2022, the federal district court for the District of Columbia vacated a lease sale for oil and gas production and development on 80.8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. After first rejecting arguments that the case was not ripe for judicial review, the court found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had arbitrarily decided not to consider foreign oil consumption in its evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions of a no action alternative pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The district court noted that both the <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-zinke-3/">Ninth Circuit</a> and the federal district court for the <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/sovereign-inupiat-for-a-living-arctic-v-bureau-of-land-management/">District of Alaska</a> had previously found that the same analysis—which reached the “counterintuitive conclusion” that total greenhouse gas emissions would be higher if no lease sales took place even though the model predicted a decrease in foreign oil consumption in the absence of the lease sales—was arbitrary and capricious. In this case, the district court found that BOEM was required either to provide a quantitative estimate of downstream greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the reduced foreign consumption or to provide a more specific explanation of why it could not do so. The court also said BOEM’s argument that it could not have calculated the emissions was undercut by the inclusion of such an estimate in a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for another lease sale a few weeks after releasing the record of decision for this lease sale. In addition, the court noted that a reasoned explanation was “especially crucial where, as here, the agency has varied so dramatically in its approach over the past year”—the Trump administration announced the lease sale in January 2021, the Biden administration rescinded it after President Biden took office, and then the Biden administration issued a new Determination of NEPA Adequacy based on the same NEPA analysis and reinstated the lease sale in August 2021 (after a federal court in Louisiana <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/louisiana-v-biden-2/">enjoined</a> the Biden administration from implementing a “pause” on new oil and gas leasing in offshore waters). The court also found that the Determination of NEPA Adequacy was procedurally defective because BOEM could not rely on it “to cure the errors in the underlying EISs” identified by the Ninth Circuit and District of Alaska unless it circulated a draft for public comment. The court rejected the plaintiff’s contentions that certain new information required preparation of a supplemental EIS, including scientific studies regarding the need to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and “the counterproductive role of oil and gas leasing to reaching that goal,” and evidence regarding potential conflicts between the lease sale and efforts to develop offshore wind. The court found that vacatur was the appropriate remedy because “the disruptive consequences of vacatur do not outweigh the seriousness of the NEPA error in this case and the need for the agency to get it right.”

The court denied intervenor-defendant Louisiana’s motion to transfer the case to the Western District of Louisiana. The court found that the action could not have been brought in the Western District of Louisiana in the first instance.

The court denied Chevron U.S.A., Inc.’s motion to intervene in the suit. Chevron was “the apparent high bidder on 34 tracts” in the lease sale. The court found that American Petroleum Institute adequately represented Chevron’s asserted interests and that the timing of Chevron’s intervention would be prejudicial to the existing parties. The court instead permitted Chevron to file its proposed motion for summary judgment as an amicus brief.

The federal district court for the District of Columbia found that American Petroleum Institute (API) met requirements to intervene as of right in a lawsuit challenging Offshore Oil and Gas Lease Sale 257 in the Gulf of Mexico. The court found that API’s members benefit financially from oil and gas leases, that the members’ economic and regulatory interests could be impaired by the outcome of the litigation, and that existing parties—including Louisiana, which had already been granted leave to intervene—would not adequately represent API’s interests. The court denied the plaintiffs’ requests that it impose limitations on API’s intervention.

The federal district court for the District of Columbia held that the State of Louisiana could intervene as of right in environmental organizations’ lawsuit challenging the Interior Department’s decision to hold an offshore oil and gas lease sale for portions of the Gulf of Mexico. The court found that there was “sufficient doubt” about the adequacy of the federal government’s representation of Louisiana’s interests, given the litigation between Louisiana and the federal government in the Western District of Louisiana concerning the Biden administration’s “pause” on federal oil and gas leasing.

Four environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia challenging federal defendants’ decision to hold an offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The complaint asserted claims under NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act, alleging, among other flaws, that the NEPA analysis “incredulously asserts that burning” up to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that would result from the lease sale “will not contribute to climate change” and will “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” compared to a no-action alternative. The plaintiffs alleged that this “irrational conclusion” was based “on the idea that foreign substitution effects would increase emissions if the U.S. did not hold a lease sale,” an assumption that the plaintiffs was not supported by available information. The plaintiffs also contended that the defendants should have updated the almost five-year-old NEPA analysis to include “new information that demonstrates additional oil and gas leasing will exacerbate the climate crisis to an extent that the Bureau did not consider in its previous NEPA analysis.” The complaint also alleged that new information revealed other risks and threats, including safety issues and harms to frontline communities and endangered species.