A coalition of environmental and tribal groups is challenging the Trump administration's efforts to roll back the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's 2016 methane waste prevention rule, arguing that the requirements are a "common-sense" way to reduce pollution from gas flaring on federal and tribal land.
In a lawsuit filed Dec. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, more than a dozen groups said an amendment to the BLM's final rule that delays almost all of the requirements "unlawfully pushes the compliance deadlines one year into the future while BLM considers other changes to the waste prevention rules." In addition to curbing emissions on federal and tribal lands, the groups argued, the rule increases revenues for states, local governments and tribes that receive royalties paid on oil and gas production.
"Rather than moving forward to implement this common-sense rule that prevents waste, saves millions of taxpayer dollars, and protects the air we breathe, the Trump administration is wasting everyone's time with yet another attempt to stop the rule from taking effect, all to appease its friends in the oil and gas industry," Earthjustice attorney Robin Cooley said in a Dec. 19 news release. "The public has made its support for this rule crystal clear, and we will use every legal tool at our disposal to block the Trump administration from rolling back these important protections for our public lands."
The BLM in early December said it is finalizing the suspension of key parts of the waste prevention rule over "concerns regarding the statutory authority, cost, complexity, feasibility, and other implications" of the requirements. The agency estimated that the delay would translate to a postponement of $110 million to $114 million in compliance costs during the first year and total reductions in compliance costs of between $40 million and $91 million over 2017-2027.
The BLM, a U.S. Department of the Interior agency, has taken multiple approaches to putting the rule on hold. In June, the agency said it would suspend the rule indefinitely, but a court in October ruled that the implementation delay was unlawful and ordered the agency to reinstate enforcement. The BLM separately put out a notice in October detailing plans for suspending key parts of the rule until Jan. 17, 2019. This proposal included a public comment period and was set forth under a different part of the law than the original suspension proposal.
The petitioning environmental and tribal groups, which include the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the BLM's most recent action "neither analyzes nor offers interim rules or guidance to satisfy its statutory responsibility to prevent waste." Instead, the lawsuit says, the amendment "creates a regulatory and policy vacuum that BLM concedes will decrease the amount of natural gas to market by nine billion cubic feet," reducing the royalties paid to eligible parties.
