The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to incorporate potential climate impacts into a revamped resource management plan (RMP) for oil and gas leasing in western Colorado that covers nearly one million acres.

Bureau of Land Management

The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado last week approved the Interior Department agency’s request to remand the 20-year RMP issued in 2016 for the Grand Junction Field Office.

The BLM’s RMP at that time had allocated 935,600 acres for oil and gas leasing to develop nearly 4,000 wells. In 2019, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Wilderness Society and the Wilderness Workshop filed the lawsuit requesting the RMP be thrown out so that a climate risk analysis could be conducted (No. 19-cv-02869). 

BLM last year had asked the court for...