An ANWR injunction?
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AIDEA asks District Court to block leasing of land from its contested leases
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority has requested the federal District Court in Alaska to issue an injunction prohibiting the Bureau of Land Management from the leasing of some land in an upcoming lease sale for the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Leases on the land in question had been obtained by AIDEA in the 2021 lease sale for the coastal plain.
AIDEA's requested injunction comes within a court case in which the agency has appealed BLM's cancellation of AIDEA's ANWR leases in 2023, after the agency had determined that the environmental impact statement for the 2021 lease sale had been deficient.
A possible major impact An injunction, if issued, would likely have a major impact on an upcoming coastal plain lease sale -- AIDEA told the court that approximately 265,000 acres of land leased to the agency in 2021 may overlap with the 400,000 acres of land that are to be offered for leasing in the lease sale. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed in 2017, mandated the conducting of two ANWR coastal plain leases sales. The first of these lease sales was held in 2021, with the second sale having to be held by the end of this year. The act also mandated that BLM offer at least 400,000 acres of land for leasing in each of the two lease sales.
At the time Petroleum News went to press BLM had not yet announced a date for the second lease sale.
But the agency under the Biden administration had challenged the validity of the environmental impact statement for the lease sales and in October issued a supplementary environmental impact statement that would apply to the second lease sale. The preferred alternative for the second sale stipulates that the minimum area of 400,000 acres should be offered for leasing and specifies the area of land that encompasses that acreage.
Failure to hold the lease sale by the end of this year and to offer at least 400,000 acres for leasing would presumably violate the 2017 federal statute.
In its court filing, requesting the injunction, AIDEA said that the court case has been fully briefed and that the parties in the case had requested a court decision by Oct. 25, approximately two months before the deadline for the second lease sale. However, the court has not yet issued a decision, presumably at least in part because the Alaska District Court currently only has one judge to handle its workload of cases.
"AIDEA is familiar with and recognizes the docket congestion the court is facing due to the lack of judges," AIDEA wrote in its court filing.
Potential for significant legal issues However, the lack of legal clarity has the potential to create some significant legal issues in relation to the upcoming lease sale. And at this stage there are several possible outcomes.
If the court rejects AIDEA's appeal against the lease cancellations, the lease sale would presumably not be impacted. If, on the other hand, the court, before the lease sale, either agrees to issue the requested injunction or to uphold AIDEA's appeal against the lease cancellations, BLM would presumably be unable to issue the legally required minimum of 400,000 acres for leasing without modifying its SEIS for the sale. If, worse still, the court were to uphold AIDEA's appeal after the upcoming lease sale, the outcome could be two different entities being granted overlapping leases on the same land, a situation that AIDEA has characterized as potential legal "scrambled eggs," given that it would be "very difficult and may be impossible to meaningfully implement any future remedy."
Meeting with DOI officials In its filing AIDEA told the court that it is meeting with Department of the Interior officials on Dec. 5 to discuss the situation and that AIDEA will notify the court of the outcome of those discussions and, hence, whether an injunction decision will be required.
But, by cancelling all the leases from the first lease sale and then overlapping areas offered for leasing in both the 2021 and 2024 lease sales "DOI now proposes to lease only a total of 400,000 acres by the end of 2024, as if Congress had mandated one rather than two such lease sales," AIDEA wrote.
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