In a victory for environmental groups and the environment in Alaska, a federal court overturned an oil and gas lease sale mandated by the Biden administration in 2022 as part of a compromise to allow for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, as reported by Reuters.
This ruling affects a lease sale of offshore tracts that opened nearly 1 million acres of federal waters for oil and gas development in the Cook Inlet in the northern Gulf of Alaska. As further detailed by Oil & Gas Journal, the sale had been canceled before in 2021 by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Offshore Energy Management because of a lack of industry interest but revived in 2022 as a major provision of the IRA deal.
Per Reuters, the federal district court found that the agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act, stating that the Interior Department did not consider a reasonable range of alternative leasing areas, weigh the impact of vessel noise on the area's beluga whales, or assess the "cumulative impact" of this sale on the environment.
On the same day, a federal court in Wyoming ruled that the Interior Department could not issue oil and gas drilling permits in the state.
In both cases, the agencies were given six months to conduct extra environmental assessments and reevaluate the effects drilling would have on the environment.
A similar victory was won over a decade ago by Caroline Cannon, an Indigenous leader who brought and won a lawsuit that stopped oil and gas exploration in her small community of Point Hope, Alaska.
Dirty energy is one of the leading contributors to rising global temperatures that worsen extreme weather events and threaten communities, wildlife, and our food supply. While tying dirty energy leases to the IRA, the focus of which is incentivizing the move away from these sources to cleaner energy sources, feels counterproductive, wins like this show that dirty energy is on its way out.
Carole Holley, an attorney at environmental law organization Earthjustice who represented the plaintiffs, said: "Today's legal victory is a win for Alaska communities, threatened beluga whales, and future generations who will face a hotter planet."
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