A federal judge has axed ConocoPhillips’s proposed oil and gas project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, citing environmental impact issues related to the Bureau of Land Management’s approval process.
District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, her 110-page ruling on Wednesday, Aug. 18, said that the BLM’s exclusion of foreign greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental impact statement was arbitrary and capricious. The BLM acted contrary to law insofar as it developed its alternatives analysis based on the view that ConocoPhillips had the right to extract all possible oil and gas from its leases, the decision said.
Gleason ruled also that the BLM acted contrary to law in its alternative analysis for the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in failing to consider the statutory directive that it give maximum protection to surface values in that area.
Gleason also wrote that the incidental take statement lacked the requisite specificity of mitigation measure for polar bears, thus vacating a formal opinion from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the project was unlikely to jeopardize polar bears or harm their critical habitat. Her decision remanded the issue back to the BLM for further proceedings.
ConocoPhillips officials said they planned to review the decision and consider their options.
The decision, which reversed earlier approval of the project under the Trump administration, drew quick criticism from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who said the ruling would outsource production to dictatorships and terrorist organizations.
“This is a horrible decision,” Dunleavy said. “We are giving America over to our enemies piece by piece.”
The project would have provided 160,000 barrels day, provide thousands of jobs, and greatly benefit the people of Alaska, he said. Earlier this year the state of Alaska joined in as an intervener in the lawsuit in defense of the BLM’s approval of the project.
The Interior Department must now begin the decision-making process again, before any further decisions are made on the project.
Gleason’s decision “recognizes that our land and our people deserve dignity and a pursuit of greater meaning,” said Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, in Fairbanks.
Maupin said that the oil industry needs to be held accountable for what they have taken from this land and what they have given back in pollution and toxics that have harmed the environment for the people who live there, including her mother in Nuiqsut, and area wildlife.
“It would be unconscionable to allow Willow to move forward when its authorizations were founded on an illegal and deficient environmental analysis that fails to lay out and address impacts to wetlands, water, land, animals and people, said Bridget Psariamos, staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, whose nonprofit firm which represented the plaintiffs in the case.
