Biden Administration Settles With Eco Groups, Blocks Oil Drilling Leases on Almost 60,000 Acres
President Joe Biden’s government has entered into a legal settlement with pro-environment groups, agreeing to block drilling for oil and gas on more than 58,000 acres of public land.
The lawsuit, filed in 2021, challenged the Trump administration’s decision to award 113 leases for fossil fuel exploration and drilling in 2019 and 2020. The case was filed by a coalition of conservation groups led by the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians just a few days before Biden took office.
According to the terms of settlement, the government has decided to halt issuing any drilling permits in the 58,617 hectares of land covered by the 113 leases located in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will only issue a final decision on the future of leases and drilling permits once it completes an additional climate and environmental impact analysis.
The analysis will comply with the April 2021 order issued by Department of the Interior secretary Deb Haaland that insists on prioritizing climate change goals in such reviews.
In June, lawsuits filed by WildEarth Guardians and other groups forced the Biden administration to reconsider its decision to sell almost four million acres of land as part of oil and gas leases.
Back in 2020, the conservation groups had won a lawsuit overturning the BLM’s decision to sell 145,000 acres of oil and gas leases in North Dakota and Montana.
The settlement comes weeks after Terry Doughty, U.S. district judge for the Western District of Louisiana, issued a permanent injunction against the Biden administration’s pause of new oil and gas leases in federal lands. The injunction applies to 13 American states.
Decline in Drilling
The Biden administration has leased the least number of acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling than any other American government
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