Judge pulls permits for 5,000-well gas project
CASPER (WNE) — A District of Columbia District Court on Friday ruled that the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of a Converse County oil and gas project was illegal due to errors in the environmental analysis.
The 5,000-well project in the Powder River Basin, initially approved in 2020, is now left in limbo as the drilling permit has been revoked and the court instructed the BLM to not approve any more permits to drill until a final remedy is decided.
Part of the environmental analysis included a groundwater model report to assess the project’s effect on groundwater supplies.
The analysis by the BLM used figures that the Environmental Protection Agency deemed inaccurate and said that the numbers used may “result in a substantial underestimation” of the amount of water an aquifer could release.
Two environmental advocacy groups — the Powder River Basin Resource Council and Western Watersheds Project — filed a lawsuit in 2022 claiming several violations of several environmental protection laws. The lawsuit also raised legal violations around the agency’s failure to require air quality mitigation measures, analyze cumulative climate change impacts, consider pacing project development to moderate impacts and require customary seasonal protections to prevent disturbance of nesting birds of prey, according to a press release from the Western Watersheds Project.
The decision of Friday only addressed the groundwater issues.
“Best practices by the industry include properly planning for treatment of produced water and protections of groundwater in Converse County,” said Powder River Basin Resource Council Board member Maria Katherman.
The Converse County project encompasses sage grouse priority habitats designated under federal sage grouse plans. Part of the project includes the Douglas Core Area, where the combined effects of past drilling and other forms of habitat disturbance already exceeded allowable disturbance thresholds under the federal sage grouse plans, according to the Western Watersheds Project.
This story was published on September 20, 2024.