Sierra Club v. National Marine Fisheries Service

The federal district court for the District of Maryland extended the effective date of its August 2024 vacatur of the biological opinion for federally regulated oil and gas program activities in the Gulf of Mexico from December 20, 2024 to May 21, 2025. American Petroleum Institute and other intervenor-defendants had filed an emergency motion either to alter or amend the court’s August 2024 judgment or for a stay pending appeal. They argued that vacatur would have “disastrous consequences,” including serious curtailment or halting of Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production as well as prevention of activities that ensure safety and protect the environment. The National Marine Fisheries Service also filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment, telling the court that it would not be able to complete its ongoing consultation under the Endangered Species Act by December 20, 2024 and that vacatur of the biological opinion on that date “will result in substantial disruption to ongoing permitted activities across the Gulf of Mexico with potential knock-on effects to domestic energy production and species conservation.” The defendants must provide status reports every 60 days.

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The federal district court for the District of Maryland ruled that the 2020 biological opinion (BiOp) for oil and gas extraction in the Gulf of Mexico violated the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The court vacated the BiOp effective December 20, 2024 and remanded to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). This case had been stayed in August 2023 pursuant to an agreement pursuant to which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management would implement measures to protect the Rice’s whale during a reinitiated consultation process. After oil and gas industry intervenor-defendants and the State of Louisiana <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/louisiana-v-haaland/">successfully challenged</a> the inclusion of two of the measures in Lease Sale 261 in the federal district court for the Western District of Louisiana, the stay was lifted in January 2024. The court’s decision vacating the BiOp found that the BiOp underestimated the risk and harms of oil spills to protected species; that the jeopardy analysis improperly assumed that the Rice’s whale and Gulf sturgeon populations remained as large as they were before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; that the “reasonably prudent alternative” addressed only two stressors likely to jeopardize the Rice’s whale; and that the incidental take statement failed to recognize oil spill take as incidental take and did not rationally quantify the number of listed species taken by vessel strikes. The court said it was not necessary to reach certain arguments made by the plaintiffs, including two climate change-related arguments: (1) that historical spill data used by NMFS did not account for increased risk of a catastrophic spill due to factors that included climate change and (2) that NMFS failed to properly account for climate change in its jeopardy analyses.

In a lawsuit challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2020 biological opinion concerning oil and gas activities on the outer continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal district court for the District of Maryland denied a motion to transfer venue to the Eastern District of Louisiana or the Southern District of Texas. One of the four failings alleged by the plaintiffs was failure to consider the compounding effects of climate-related population shifts on threats to endangered species posed by leasing activity. Although the court found that either proposed transferee district would be a proper venue, it concluded that the defendants failed to demonstrate that either district would provide “a more convenient or equitable stage for litigating this matter.”