September 1, 2021 |
The White House and Interior Department blinked yesterday. The Biden Administration has ignored a federal judge’s injunction against the president’s executive order banning new oil and gas leases on federal land. A federal judge issued the injunction this past June in the lawsuit, Louisiana v Biden. Interior has stonewalled on resuming lease sales, though. That changed yesterday.
Carbon County will see a benefit from the judge’s injunction against the injunction with leases being sold here by early next year here. The state office of the Bureau of Land Management announced it will comply with the injunction blocking the ban, and release 459 parcels in Wyoming for an upcoming sale. The parcels total over 568,000 acres statewide. Here in Carbon County, at least 13 parcels are listed totaling more 25,000 acres.
Just last week, Governor Mark Gordon blasted Interior for ignoring both the letter and the spirit of the court order by not moving forward with lease sales. In yesterday’s release, the BLM said following a 30-day scoping period, the agency will undertake environmental reviews and provide another opportunity for public comment in accordance with a new Instruction Memorandum that was issued on April 30th of this year. The scoping period will end on October 1.
All of parcels included in the Wyoming sale were originally recommended lease sales that were cancelled in March and June of this year because of executive order 14008. The war is not over, though. Biden Administration has appealed the federal judge’s injunction, filing court papers in the lawsuit just last week. Meanwhile, Wyoming’s lawsuit against the White House over the executive order is still pending.
