The federal government is skirting a court ruling and has illegally issued more than 200 permits to drill for oil and gas in a controversial Delaware-sized prospect near Douglas, conservationists claim in a new legal filing.
Operators are already drilling wells in the Converse County Oil and Gas Project in violation of a slew of environmental regulations, the Powder River Basin Resource Council and Western Watersheds Project contend in a 108-page Nov. 5 court filing. The legal papers supplement an ongoing case against the U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management.
Industry drilling activity and federal actions to authorize 5,000 wells across 1.5 million acres threaten 54 greater sage grouse breeding-ground leks and numerous raptor nests, the complaint states. The proposed wells could deplete groundwater and affect pronghorn and mule deer habitat on public and private land across the region.
The conservation groups successfully sued to block the project last year when a federal judge agreed that the government misstated available drilling groundwater “by a factor of 10,000.”
“By plowing ahead with the project despite an unresolved court order halting new drilling permits, the BLM is rubbing salt in the wounds of the communities and species.”
Sarah Stellberg
“We won our case in September,” after challenging the project’s environmental impact statement, said Sarah Stellberg, staff attorney at the nonprofit Advocates for the West, which represents the conservation groups. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary injunction in 2024, and the BLM issued no drilling permits for about a year after, Stellberg said.
But in August, the BLM began approving drilling permits based on new environmental reviews and a flawed revision of groundwater, the updated suit contends.
“To avoid that [Chutkan] ruling, BLM started pushing out these piecemeal [environmental] documents, none of which fixed the issues,” Stellberg said. “By plowing ahead with the project despite an unresolved court order halting new drilling permits, the BLM is rubbing salt in the wounds of the communities and species negatively impacted by this behemoth industrial development,” she said in a separate statement.
No production?
An industry group spokesman rejected the conservation claims, saying “it is clear that the only acceptable outcome for these groups is no production at all.” Ryan McConnaughey, in a statement from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said the conservation groups failed to point out any harm, yet persist in filing claims.
“Technological advancements in both drilling and reclamation sciences have continued to reduce impacts on Wyoming landscapes while increasing both production and revenues to the state,” the PAW statement reads. “We will continue to vigorously fight these efforts on behalf of the industry, Wyoming’s communities and the people who rely on the good paying jobs found in Wyoming’s oil and natural gas industry.”
The government has yet to react to the supplemental complaint, and the BLM did not respond to a request for comment this week. The BLM claims to have addressed the deficiencies alleged in the original lawsuit by supplementing the flawed environmental report this summer.
Wyoming has joined the lawsuit on the side of the federal government defendants. The state asked Chutkan on Friday to allow a delayed response to the new claims. Wyoming should respond only when the government does — a schedule likely slowed by the government shutdown, according to court documents.
The conservation groups say the government and its court friends, including PAW, should not be allowed extra time. Conservationists “face substantial prejudice and irreparable harm to themselves and the environment,” court papers say. “Principles of justice” require the case move forward expeditiously, the groups state.
“BLM should not be permitted to continue approving oil and gas development during the shutdown while simultaneously claiming the shutdown precludes it from defending those very actions in court,” reads one motion from the environmental groups that references the record federal closure.
Devon Energy, called out in the suit for recently preparing drilling sites, did not respond to a query about the environmental embroglio. The Oklahoma company advertises on its website “environmentally responsible production,” and “a culture of health, safety and environmental stewardship.”
Whistleblower
The drilling plan, promoted by Devon, Chesapeake Energy Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Northwoods Energy and EOG Resources, Inc., ran into trouble at the beginning when a BLM whistleblower claimed the agency was dismissing worries about migrating and nesting raptors. The BLM fired him in 2021, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, for doing his job.
In 2020, in the waning days of President Trump’s first administration, the government approved the project.
“The Converse County Project is a capstone of the first Trump administration’s push for ‘energy dominance’ in public lands management, and its efforts to relieve the fossil fuel industry from federal environmental safeguards, including under the Clean Air Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and 2015 Greater Sage-Grouse Plan Amendments,” the latest filing states. Drilling would majorly affect air quality locally and regionally, including in national parks. The drilling program abandons traditional wildlife protections like seasonal drilling restrictions, conservationists contend.
Among the new court charges is that the BLM is issuing drilling permits based on yet another flawed groundwater analysis and without allowing the public to comment. Up to 283 wells have been approved recently, most of them illegally, the suit contends.
Many issues in the original suit remain unresolved, Stellberg said, because Judge Chutkan did not need to address them after she found the first fatal groundwater flaw.
The lawsuit seeks to resolve whether the government can regulate landscape disturbance, destruction and other impacts from oil and gas wells that are drilled on private property but access both private and public resources locked underground. Such wells are known as fee/fee/fed wells, acknowledging the split ownership and interests.
The BLM says it has no authority to regulate impacts on such wells; conservationists disagree.
Federal analyses also fail to take a comprehensive look at incremental harms to the environment as they add up — a concept known as cumulative impacts, the latest filings contend. Instead, the government is now approving wells on a piecemeal basis.
In doing so, the government is nickel-and-diming natural assets across the sprawling terrain, even after it acknowledged it needs to take a comprehensive look at the project by preparing an environmental report, according to the recent court filings.
“All these other issues are teed up before the court and awaiting a ruling,” Stellberg said.
This same article seems to always pop up. And its mostly a lose lose situation. Here is where i state my case. People who are filing lawsuits in the name of conservation really need to take a good look at themselves and ask how much fuel, electricity and goods they use each day and then ask how much is too much. People who want to mine should ask themselves how valuable the resource vs. the damage done to peoples/animals lives is worth. And finally anytime the state of Wyoming which loves its hunting and fishing tries to halt any energy production it should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves who was it that 71 percent of the public voted for.
The hypocrisy here is so thick you need a saw to cut it. Here we are again talking about Sage Grouse, Raptors and water, 3 things that never get brought up when a wind farm goes in. Why is that? Calling any of the resource councils a conservation group is akin to calling Antifa community organizers. I have often wondered where these groups get their considerable bankrolls to fund their lawsuits. They have killed complete industries and put thousands out of work, yet the money keeps coming. Earth First, we’ll mine the other planets later.
This is very well said and im on the complete opposite side of the argument.