SUWA Prevails in Oil & Gas Lease Sale Challenges
SUWA won several long-pending administrative challenges this spring to three separate Trump-era oil and gas leasing decisions the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made in 2019 and 2020.
SUWA’s protests challenged the BLM’s decisions to sell 73 oil and gas leases for development on public lands throughout Utah. The proposed lease parcels contain important resource values including, among other things, lands with wilderness characteristics and wildlife habitat. Energy development on the parcels would have destroyed those values, consumed large quantities of water, polluted the air, and added to our growing climate crisis.
In her decision granting SUWA’s protests, the Utah Deputy State Director agreed that the BLM’s prior leasing analyses did not properly consider the climate change and greenhouse gas effects of selling the parcels for development. She directed the agency to reject the still-pending lease offers.
As a result of these victories, the BLM will not issue any of the protested parcels and the public lands they overlay are no longer in immediate danger of development. Wiping the slate clean of these parcels is a huge victory for Utah’s wild places and wildlife.
—Landon Newell
Biden BLM Reaffirms Trump-era Energy Leases in Wilderness
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shocked conservationists earlier this summer when it reaffirmed Trump-era decisions to issue oil and gas leases in Utah’s San Rafael Desert. One lease in particular is especially problematic since it is located within what is now the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness.
In 2019, the Trump administration’s BLM rushed to issue a lease to drill in the heart of Labyrinth Canyon just 12 days before Congress designated the area as wilderness in the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act—a designation that prohibits new leasing. The Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness is bounded on the east by the Green River and on the south by Canyonlands National Park and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The Labyrinth Canyon stretch of the Green River abuts the lease and passes through Bowknot Bend on its way to the confluence with the Colorado River. This stretch of river is one of the most iconic and world-renowned segments of river in the United States.
The BLM’s decision to reaffirm this lease effectively puts the Biden administration’s stamp of approval on the disaster that was the Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda. In addition, despite congressional wilderness designation, and with time quickly running out on the Trump administration, the agency scurried to slip its allies a last-minute handout by rushing through a decision to authorize drilling on the Labyrinth Canyon lease. SUWA and our partners challenged that approval in federal court in Washington, DC and initially stopped the drilling project, but the court eventually allowed the development to proceed. The company drilled the well, which turned out to be a dry hole. The Biden administration’s decision to reaffirm the lease keeps the threat of future development in the wilderness area alive.
The Biden BLM’s decision also reaffirmed 50 additional leases the Trump administration sold in the surrounding San Rafael Desert. It is distressing to see the Biden administration bless Trump-era leasing decisions that were so rushed and so wrong.
SUWA is reviewing this decision and will do whatever we can to protect this matchless landscape.
—Landon Newell
The above articles first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of our Redrock Wilderness newsletter. Become a member to receive our print newsletter in your mailbox 3 times a year.
