Federal Judge Chides BLM for ‘Sloppy’ Climate Review of Wyoming Oil, Gas Leases

A federal district judge has again sent the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) back to the drawing board on an environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Wyoming, citing inadequate consideration of climate change impacts.

In a ruling filed late last week, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit found that the BLM’s supplemental assessment of oil and gas leasing on federal land in Wyoming fell short of requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The judge remanded the assessment to the agency for further consideration. The supplemental assessment had been prepared in response to an earlier ruling remanding BLM’s previous environmental reviews of the leasing.

Siding with the plaintiffs in the case,...