Description: Challenge to approval of 173 oil and gas lease sales across eight states.
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Dakota Resource Council v. U.S. Department of the Interior
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 08/26/2022 Motion to Intervene Download Memorandum filed by States of Montana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming supporting motion to intervene as defendant-intervenors. 06/28/2022 Complaint Download Complaint filed. Conservation Groups Alleged Failures to Meaningfully Consider Climate Impacts of Oil and Gas Lease Sales. A case brought by 10 conservation groups filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia challenged approval of 173 oil and gas lease sales across eight states. The complaint asserted climate change-based violations of National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The complaint asserted that an environmental impact statement should have been prepared. It alleged a failure to provide “meaningful analysis” of greenhouse gas emissions in the seven environmental assessments prepared for the lease sales and asserted that the conclusions in the findings of no significant impact were “unsupported and inconsistent with the agency’s acknowledgment of the climate crisis.” The complaint also asserted that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to consider cumulative impacts of the lease sales by “fail[ing] to evaluate the severity of their collective impacts in the context of the climate crisis and GHG emissions from the Leasing Program.” The complaint also asserted that BLM violated FLPMA by “fail[ing] to define or to take any action necessary to prevent the further unnecessary or undue degradation of public lands from acknowledged climate impacts and despite its acknowledged contribution to those impacts.”