ELR Citation: 51 ELR 20160
No(s). 3:20-cv-00290-SLG and 3:20-cv-00308-SLG (D. Alaska Aug 18, 2021) (Gleason, J.)

A district court vacated BLM's approval of an oil and gas project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Indigenous and environmental groups argued BLM violated NEPA by failing to adequately analyze the effects of the project's downstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its EIS, failing to consider reasonable alternatives, and failing to take a "hard look" at the project's impact on Teshekpuk Lake caribou. The court found that BLM took the requisite hard look at the winter impacts on the caribou, but that the agency's exclusion of foreign GHG emissions in the EIS was arbitrary and capricious, and that it violated NEPA insofar as it developed its alternatives analysis based on a view that an oil company had the right to extract all possible oil and gas from its leases, and by failing to consider the statutory directive that it give "maximum protection" to surface values in an area serving as winter habitat and calving grounds for the caribou herd. The groups also argued FWS' biological opinion impermissibly relied on unspecified and uncertain future Marine Mammal Protection Act mitigation measures to reach its no-jeopardy and no-adverse-modification conclusions. The court found that BLM's reliance on the biological opinion was arbitrary and capricious because the incidental take statement lacked the requisite specificity of mitigation measures for polar bears and the take finding was arbitrary and capricious. It therefore vacated BLM's approval of the project and FWS' biological opinion, and remanded to the agencies for further proceedings.