Legal

Since Western Energy Alliance’s first legal victory in 2011 overturning an Obama Administration policy that slowed federal drilling permits, our Legal Defense Fund has been an effective force for protecting your federal assets in the West. From overturning two Obama rules on federal regulation of fracking and waste prevention to a recent victory upholding the record $972 million lease sale in New Mexico, we’ve had our share of successes.

However, no victory comes easily and no setback is final until the full appellate process is complete. While we’ve had some recent adverse rulings in district courts regarding climate change and sage grouse impacts analysis, Western Energy Alliance has preserved a seat at the table for industry and we are confident we can bring those cases to their ultimate successful conclusions in the circuit courts, thereby ensuring valid existing lease rights are protected.

Defending Valid Existing Lease Rights

Our legal work doesn’t just protect nearly every federal lease issued in the Rocky Mountain West since 2015. Your entire federal leasehold is at risk without the work of Western Energy Alliance. Precedents set in current cases we’re intervening in will determine the sanctity of valid existing lease rights and the integrity of the entire federal onshore system.

President-elect Biden has promised to ban leasing and permitting on federal lands. To ban new development on existing leases is to invalidate existing lease rights, an outcome devastating to western state economies with significant federal production, not to mention the operators, thousands of small businesses, and hundreds of thousands of jobs supported by such activities.

Our work in court defending valid existing lease rights is the springboard we’ll use as we oppose whatever form Biden’s federal oil and natural gas ban takes. Whether an outright presidential order or a moratorium to conduct multi-year, full-life-cycle analysis, the legal foundation we’ve set will enable us to effectively counter any executive action.

Ongoing Legal Work

Here’s a partial list of cases we’re involved in.

IPAA v. Jewell: Having overturned the Obama BLM fracking rule and upheld the Trump rescission rule, we’re defending against the appeal of the Trump rescission rule to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.[i]
Western Energy Alliance v. Jewell: Having overturned the Obama BLM venting and flaring rule in the District Court for Wyoming, we expect environmental groups will file an appeal of that ruling to the Tenth Circuit by the December 22nd deadline.
WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt in the D.C. District Court involves all federal lease sales in 2015 and 2016 in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Judge Contreras ruled in April 2019 that BLM failed to conduct adequate full lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. BLM completed corrective NEPA in Wyoming, and after a brief suspension of leases and APDs, allowed development to move forward. BLM later completed the same corrective NEPA for the Colorado and Utah leases at issue. Plaintiffs filed another complaint on the supplemental NEPA in Wyoming, and again, Judge Contreras ruled that the supplemental NEPA was inadequate. Western Energy Alliance is helping BLM complete that additional analysis before the end of the Trump administration.
Western Watersheds v. Bernhardt in the Idaho District Court challenges the Wyoming Feb., June and Sept. 2017, March, June and Sept 2018, and February 2019 lease sales; the Montana June and December 2017, March 2018, and March 2019 sales; the Sept. 2017 and Sept. 2018 Utah sales; and the June and September 2018 Nevada sales on the basis of sage grouse, as well as leasing policy changes made by the Trump Administration. In January 2020 Judge Bush vacated leases from 2018 sales in Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. The Alliance joined DOJ and the State of Wyoming in appealing to the Ninth Circuit, and were granted a stay of the order vacating leases pending appeal. Phase II briefing is underway on the 2017 Wyoming and Montana sales.
Montana Wildlife Federation v. Bernhard in the District of Montana challenged the Wyoming and Montana December 2017 and the March and June 2018 lease sales on the basis of sage grouse. Judge Morris vacated the leases from these sales, finding that BLM failed to sufficiently prioritize leasing outside of sage grouse habitat. BLM canceled the Montana leases and intends to reoffer the parcels at the December 2020 lease sale. The Alliance has joined DOJ and the State of Wyoming in appealing the decision on the Wyoming leases.
WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt in the New Mexico District Court involves three lease sales in New Mexico, including the record-breaking $972 million sale, on the basis of greenhouse gas analysis. Judge Brack upheld BLM’s analysis and rejected WEG’s request to vacate the leases. Western Energy Alliance continues our involvement defending the sales in the plaintiffs’ appeal to the Tenth Circuit.

WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt in the D.C. District Court covers 23 lease sales across the West from 2016-2019, including nearly every sale not covered by the above four lawsuits. The case was assigned to Judge Contreras again, and plaintiffs are alleging the same NEPA failures as the initial WEG lawsuit in his court. BLM has agreed to re-do the analysis for 20 of the sales based on Judge Contreras’ decision in the other case before him. Western Energy Alliance is helping BLM complete that analysis before the end of the Trump Administration.

Sage grouse litigation: We suspended our litigation challenging the 2015 Obama sage grouse plans in multiple states when the Trump Administration embarked on a rewrite of all the plans. We have helped the administration with two rounds of rewrites, but will need to re-engage in court once the environmental groups challenge the final Trump plans, due any day now.

We challenged the Obama New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) OOOO/OOOOa regulations in 2012 and 2016 on the basis of regulating methane without a proper endangerment finding, as well as several technical issues with the rules. Once environmental groups and certain blue states challenged the Trump OOOOa rule changes, we intervened to protect the technical changes to the rule as well as to uphold the reorientation of the Trump rule to indirect regulation of methane through capture of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

[i] Western Energy Alliance joined forces with the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) to successfully litigate the BLM hydraulic fracturing and venting & flaring (waste prevention) rules, with IPAA covering all costs for the former and the Alliance for the latter. Western Energy Alliance alone is defending federal leasing.

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