Two lawsuits filed against ANWR leasing

Total of 17 organizations seek to halt federal agencies from holding sale in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain area

Steve Sutherlin

Petroleum News

A pair of lawsuits attempting to halt oil and gas leasing activity in the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were filed in the U.S. District Court for Alaska Aug. 24, just one week after Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed a record of decision Aug. 17 which cleared the way to schedule the first lease sale in the project area.

The legal actions were not unexpected; the secretary took 11 months from the date the environmental impact statement was finalized to issue the ROD, citing the need to ensure that the leasing plan was legally ironclad.

The first case - National Audubon Society et al. v. Bernhardt et al., Case No. 1:20-cv - pits the society and co-plaintiffs Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, against Bernhardt in his official capacity as secretary of the Interior, the Bureau Of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The suit claims Bernhardt and BLM based the ROD in part on an assertion that Congress mandated that the 1.56 million acre Coastal Plain be managed for an oil and gas program, calling it misinterpretation of the Tax Act “as overriding their other legal obligations,” including those under the Refuge Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and the Wilderness Act.

The society seeks for the court to set aside the ROD, EIS and the biological opinion for the oil and gas leasing program for the Coastal Plain and find any actions taken by defendants in reliance on the documents as void.

It further seeks an injunction “as needed to prevent irreparable harm from implementation of the oil and gas leasing program for the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” until the defendants comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and the environmental site assessment.

The second - Gwich’in Steering Committee v. Bernhardt, Case No. 3:20-cv - pits the committee and co-plaintiffs Alaska Wilderness League, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society-Yukon, Defenders of Wildlife, Environment America Inc., Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges, National Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Refuge Association, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Wilderness Watch against Bernhardt in his official capacity as secretary of the Interior, the U.S. Department of the Interior, BLM and USFWS.

The committee asks the court to “vacate and set aside as unlawful any and all agency approvals and underlying analysis documents, including the final EIS, ROD, ANILCA Section 810 Final Evaluation, and BiOp, as well as any decisions and documents based on the unlawful actions, including decisions to lease and leases.”

It also seeks an injunction prohibiting BLM from authorizing any activities under the Coastal Plain leasing program which rely on those documents.

Both actions ask the court to award plaintiff's costs and attorney fees.