Challenges legal and financial to the extractive industries and therefore to Wyoming's economy.

I haven't written much on energy topics recently, and a I have a lingering two part series that's related to this that I have yet to finish, but a couple of recent events bring this topic back to the forefront, so on this Wednesday, when I usually feature something to do with the topic of work, I'll bring this back up.

Neither are really good developments for Wyoming's economy.

The first is that a Federal District Court judge of the District of Columbia ruled on March 19, in a sixty page opinion, that the BLM had failed to comply with Federal environmental laws by failing ot have taken into account climate change in issuing certain Federal leases in Wyoming.

This hasn't been really well reported on. The ruling does nothing about current oil and gas drilling, as some seemed to think. Rather,  it holds up issued and existing leases that were part of a specific set of issued leases.  Having said that, it isn't an insignificant number of leases.  Turning to the decision:

BLM issued 282 leases through the Wyoming Lease Sales, encompassing approximately 303,000 acres of federal land across multiple BLM planning areas. Pls. Mem. at 1. The leased parcels are managed by ten different BLM field offices—which are responsible for drafting and 9 implementing the resource management plans and EISs governing the parcels—overseen by three district offices. 6 See Fed. Defs.’ Cross-Mot. Summ. J. & Opp’n Pls. Mem. (“BLM Mem.”) at 7, ECF No. 63. Those three district offices conducted the lease sales at issue here in May, August, and November 2015, and May and August 2016.7 Id. at 7–8.8 For each lease sale, each district office involved prepared (1) an EA tiered to the relevant resources management plans and EISs issued by field offices at the land use planning stage; and (2) a FONSI disavowing the need for a new, leasing stage EIS. In total, therefore, the record contains nine EA9 /FONSI10 combinations, tiered to nineteen resource management plan/EIS combinations, including resource management plan amendments. Id. WildEarth participated in the comment and protest periods for each of the challenged lease sales

282 leases over 303,000 acres is a lot of leases.

This decision remanded the matter to the BLM, from which it came, with instructions that the BLM complete the environmental assessments that the Court felt were required but lacking.

Okay, so what does this do?

Well, it's hard to say, but at least right now the Court in D.C. is on record that climate change needs to be considered by the Federal lease issuing entities.  It's likely that the decision will be appealed, but appeals aren't super speedy.  So these leases will be held up for some time, probably, on appeal.

I feel that this decision is unlikely to hold up on appeal, but I also had wondered for a long time when this approach in this court would be taken.  It's a really obvious legal strategy and that it took somebody so long to attempt it is the surprising thing.  The challenger in this instance isn't alone, however, as just a couple of months ago I read of a similar approach being taken by a teenage plaintiff.  With this ruling on record, it won't be easy to dump her case as lacking merit on its face.  Ultimately, therefore, resolution at the appellate level will be critical.  Whichever side looses, and I'd guess it would be those supporting this decision, will appeal it to the United States Supreme Court, but my further guess is that unless one of the Circuit Court of Appeals takes the same approach, the United States Supreme Court is unlikely to take it up.

The Court of money, i.e., the stock exchange, took up the topic of coal's viability to an extent when the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading on Cloud Peak Energy's stocks. The coal company has been in financial trouble, but coal itself has been so this isn't that surprising of a development.

We note this story as well as the latter certainly is one that is significant to a state in which the majority of the funding for education comes from coal severance taxes.  The recent ups and downs of the extractive industries have continued on into this year, when there was a lot of hope they would not, and now there's some added dimensions to those stories.