As President Joe Biden’s administration prepares to hold its first onshore oil and gas drilling lease sales, environmental groups have filed a new lawsuit to attempt to stop the largest of these sales, in Wyoming.
It’s the second lawsuit in a week to challenge the administration on its drilling plans.
The suit comes as the Biden administration struggles with the political fallout of high gas prices and political attacks from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic vote on Capitol Hill who has been critical of Biden’s energy and climate agenda.
Environmental law group Earthjustice, filed the complaint on behalf of the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth in DC District Court on Wednesday against Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Bureau of Land Management. The complaint was shared first with CNN.
The groups urgue the federal government, in its decision to put the Wyoming parcels up for bid, failed to address the environmental impacts to groundwater and wildlife — including the threatened sage-grouse, pronghorn and mule deer — as well as the climate impacts of pumping more planet-warming gas into the air.
The groups are targeting the Wyoming sale because of its size; of the 130,000 acres of federal land being offered to oil and gas companies, around 120,000 acres are in Wyoming.
Wednesday’s lawsuit is the latest battle for a group of environmental attorneys that were successful in persuading the DC District Court to invalidate a massive lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. That case, which was filed last year and decided this past January, effectively halted offshore leasing during the Biden administration’s tenure so far.
One of the activists, Freeman said that Earthjustice is suing because the government failed to adequately consider the environmental cost of the sales.
“The agency acknowledged that production and combustion of oil and gas developed on the leases could generate huge volumes of greenhouse gases and could result in billions of dollars in social and environmental costs,” the complaint states, adding that BLM could have offered less land in Wyoming as it did in other states.
“What this sale will do is lock in about 188 square miles of public lands for oil and gas for the long-term,” Freeman said. “