Healthy Gulf v. Burgum

The federal district court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM’s) environmental review for Oil and Gas Lease Sale 259 in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Biden administration approved in February 2023, failed to take the hard look required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As threshold matters, the court concluded that the environmental organizations had associational standing for the suit and that the lease sale was subject to NEPA even though the Inflation Reduction Act mandated that BOEM hold the lease sale. On the merits, the court found that BOEM’s baseline scenario for greenhouse gas emissions did not address information—such as the Inflation Reduction Act—that BOEM admitted could have “major” implications for energy markets. The court also said BOEM failed to satisfactorily explain why it could not address such information. The court rejected, however, the environmental organizations’ contentions that BOEM failed to address the lease sale’s compatibility with U.S. climate goals. The court found that BOEM “reasonably contextualized the magnitude of its emissions estimates,” including by comparing them to emissions targets under the Paris Agreement and the Biden administration’s net-zero by 2050 target. The court also found that BOEM failed to take a hard look at impacts to Rice’s whale but concluded that BOEM adequately considered environmental justice impacts, oil spill risks, and other leasing scenarios, including reduced leasing alternatives. The court said it would order additional briefing on the appropriate remedy for the NEPA violations.

On March 22, 2023, Chevron U.S.A. Inc moved for leave to intervene. Chevron noted that the Inflation Reduction Act stated that that the lease sale should be conducted “not later than March 31, 2023” and argued that this case “directly implicates” Chevron’s interests because it had “already expended substantial costs and efforts to prepare to participate” in the lease sale in reliance on it taking place. On March 29, BOEM <a href="https://www.boem.gov/newsroom/press-releases/gulf-mexico-oil-and-gas-lease-sale-results-announced">announced</a> that it had held the lease sale.

Six environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia asserting that federal defendants violated NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act when they decided to hold a Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale that offers more than 73 million acres of public waters for leasing, which the plaintiffs alleged would be one of the largest offshore lease sales in U.S. history. The complaint alleged that the final supplemental EIS prepared by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) failed to take a hard look at the lease sale’s impacts. With respect to climate change, the plaintiffs contended that BOEM relied on “problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that this massive lease sale will result in only ‘slightly higher domestic emissions’ than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments,” including the lease sale’s impact on the remaining global carbon budget (“the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent that can be emitted without exceeding the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5℃ of warming above pre-industrial levels”). The plaintiffs also alleged that BOEM failed to consider climate impacts such as sea level rise, flooding, and increased storms on Gulf of Mexico communities and cumulative climate impacts of other Gulf oil and gas leasing and reasonably foreseeable oil and gas infrastructure projects. On March 22, 2023, Chevron U.S.A. Inc moved for leave to intervene. Chevron noted that the Inflation Reduction Act stated that that the lease sale should be conducted “not later than March 31, 2023” and argued that this case “directly implicates” Chevron’s interests because it had “already expended substantial costs and efforts to prepare to participate” in the lease sale in reliance on it taking place. On March 29, BOEM <a href="https://www.boem.gov/newsroom/press-releases/gulf-mexico-oil-and-gas-lease-sale-results-announced">announced</a> that it had held the lease sale.