Two environmental groups sued the Interior Department seeking to invalidate 397 federal oil and gas leases on some 380,000 acres of public land (WildEarth Guardians v. Jewell, D.D.C., 1:16-CV-1724, 8/25/16).
WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility filed the complaint on Aug. 25 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas leasing program “contributes vast amounts of [greenhouse gas] pollution to the atmosphere.”
The BLM manages nearly 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, about half of which contains oil or natural gas, they said.
The lawsuit ...