Efforts to grow drilling on federal lands experienced a major setback in Wyoming last month. A district court judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated environmental law when it approved 5,000 oil wells spanning 1.5 million acres in the state. In a win for environmental groups, the BLM has to go back to the drawing board to continue this project.
The Plan
In 2020, the BLM, led by then–Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, announced that it had approved the Converse County Oil and Gas Project to develop 5,000 new oil and natural gas wells in Wyoming. The area in question was roughly the size of Delaware and included parts of Thunder Basin National Grassland, a popular hunting and fishing area.
The stated goal was to “strengthen domestic energy production and independence,” according to a press release. It had the support of multiple Wyoming politicians, including Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso.
“Completing this project highlights our efforts here at the BLM to encourage responsible development on our public lands,” Kim Liebhauser, BLM Wyoming Acting State Director, said. “I really appreciate all the hard work and attention to detail by everyone involved, which resulted in a balanced approach that facilitates domestic development while mitigating potential environmental impacts.”
The Lawsuit
In response, in 2022, two local conservation nonprofits, Western Watersheds Project (WWP) and Powder River Basin Resource Council, sued to stop the development, claiming that BLM had violated several environmental laws.
They argued that the BLM had failed to take “a ‘hard look’ at various environmental impacts like impacts to groundwater and greenhouse gas emissions, justifying elimination of alternatives from further analysis, mitigating air emissions, and preventing unnecessary or undue degradation of the public lands,” according to the lawsuit.
GearJunkie spoke over the phone with Erik Molvar, executive director of WWP. Molvar cited concerns over the environmental impact to the greater sage grouse, a bird.
“They only survive where there are large expanses of untouched, pristine sagebrush habitat, and they have been declining for many years from an original population of about 16 million to today’s population of perhaps 200,000, so there are less than 2% of the sage grouse that naturally would have existed before the colonization of the West,” Molvar said.
He also called them the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to ecosystem health. “When you start seeing your sage grouse populations decline, it signals land health homes that indicate a loss of habitat function for a variety of other species,” he explained. WWP was also concerned about the effects on raptors, golden eagles, and hawks.
The Ruling
On Feb. 27, D.C. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan handed down her decision in the case. She ruled that the Converse County project violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and rescinded approval of the project. A core part of this landmark law mandates that the federal government analyze whether there are any “reasonable alternatives” to the proposed project.
Chutkan ruled that the BLM did not take this necessary step, citing the agency’s failure to explore the option of fewer wells and a slower pace of development. The court entirely threw out the existing environmental impact statement for the project.
The BLM is not exempt from “examining alternatives that mitigate general environmental harms. It is beyond doubt that NEPA requires consideration of reasonable alternatives to a contemplated action that minimize or reduce the environmental effects of its decision,” the ruling said.
“The errors here were the type that prompts ‘substantial doubt’ that the agency chose correctly,” Chutkan said.
What It Means
The BLM will have to conduct a new environmental impact statement. Molvar estimates that this could take up to a year.
However, this will not put a stop to all drilling in the area. The agency issued 200 new permits last year, and Chutkan ruled that these did not fall under the scope of this lawsuit.
The Reactions
The conservation groups at the heart of the lawsuit saw this as a limited win. “This excellent ruling held that the BLM violated NEPA by not properly analyzing proposed alternatives in its Environment Impact Statement,” Donna Birkholz, Powder River Basin Resource Council’s executive director, said in an email to GearJunkie.
“However, the win is limited, because this administration is essentially continuing this project anyway by approving many smaller projects within the original project area. This piecemealing tactic, along with the administration’s efforts to gut NEPA, means the government is approving leasing projects faster with less rigorous analysis and less opportunity for public comment and accountability.”
Molvar said that WWP will continue to pursue any legal action that it can. “It’s going to be a running battle to defend the West from the oil industry and the cattle industry and the mining industry and the logging industry. The corporate extraction industries are running the agencies that manage the public lands right now … and that means that the law and the courts are going to be the land’s best defense for a while,” he said.
WWP recently filed another lawsuit against the BLM for stripping protections for the greater sage grouse in 2025.
GJ reached out to BLM for comment. “The BLM is reviewing the court’s decision and considering next steps,” it said.
The Petroleum Association of Wyoming criticized the ruling. “The ruling is a blow to the creative work of balancing development and conservation in Wyoming that will limit future collaborations if left standing. It is definitive proof that the federal mineral management system is broken. Thankfully, sensible resource development in the Powder River Basin will continue via other permitting avenues,” it said in a press release.
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