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ANWR lease sale lawsuits reactivation?
Environmental organizations and Gwich'in Steering committee want to resume challenges to legality of anticipated lease sales Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
Several environmental organizations and the Gwich'in Steering Committee have asked the federal District Court in Alaska to re-activate three lawsuits challenging the legality of holding oil and gas lease sales for the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Filed in 2020 The court cases were originally filed in 2020 to challenge the legality of the ANWR lease sale that was held in January 2021 under the first Trump administration. However, following significant policy changes regarding oil and gas exploration in ANWR under the incoming Biden administration, the court cases were stayed in September 2021. Now, given moves by the Trump administration to proceed with ANWR leases sales, the plaintiffs in the cases want the cases to move ahead again.
The plaintiffs argue that both the original government decisions regarding the holding of the lease sales and the new lease sale decisions violate several federal statutes, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act; the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act; the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; the National Environmental Policy Act; the Wilderness Act; the Endangered Species Act; and the Administrative Procedures Act.
Impact on natural resources At the heart of the lawsuit are concerns about the potential impacts of activities related to oil and gas leases on sensitive natural resources in the region, including the Porcupine caribou herd that uses the Coastal Plain in the summer for calving and as a region with high protein nutrition.
"The over 1.5 million acre Coastal Plain is a vibrant and ecologically rich area that has been referred to as the 'Serengeti of the Arctic' and is recognized as the biological heart of the Arctic Refuge," the plaintiffs wrote in one of the court filings. "It provides rare and important habitat for many animals, including caribou; polar and grizzly bears; birds; ice seals; musk oxen; and wolves."
For a number of years the Gwich'in have expressed strong concerns about the potential impact of oil and gas industrial activities on the Porcupine herd-- caribou form a primary subsistence food source for the Gwich'in. The Gwich'in people live in the more southerly part of ANWR.
New record of decision In October the Department of the Interior signed a new record of decision, aligned with the 2020 record of decision that preceded the 2021 lease sale, to guide management of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program. When the federal government issued that record of decision in 2020 it argued that rules including no surface occupancy stipulations for some areas; operational timing limitations; and the imposition of required operating procedures would adequately protect sensitive environmental resources and subsistence uses of the Coastal Plain.
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