Healthy Gulf v. Burgum

Five environmental organizations filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia challenging federal defendants’ finalization of the Gulf of America Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) Lease Sale 2 (BBG2) in March 2026. The organizations contended that the OBBBA (also referred to as the 2025 Reconciliation Act of 2025), which provided that the Interior Secretary “shall conduct” 30 oil and gas lease sales in this region of the Gulf, did not exempt the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from its legal obligations under NEPA. The organizations alleged that by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement, the defendants violated NEPA and failed “to properly consider or mitigate the extensive harms from this action to the Gulf ecosystem and surrounding communities.” The complaint alleged that “[t]he oil and natural gas production resulting from BBG2 over the next fifty years will lock in decades of greenhouse gas pollution that will exacerbate the climate crisis worldwide and increase harms to these communities.” The complaint described “effects of climate warming [that] are already being acutely felt by vulnerable Gulf communities,” including increasingly severe storms, flooding, sea level rise, and coastal erosion. The organizations also alleged that the defendants failed to satisfy Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act obligations to consider relevant environmental information and to assess the impacts of delayed decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure. In addition, the organizations asserted a violation of the Endangered Species Act, alleging that the defendant failed to ensure that the project was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the Rice’s whale. The organizations also alleged that a former industry lobbyist’s failure to recuse himself from the review and approval of the project demonstrated that the approval of the project was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.