Lead Article:

ENERGY GROUPS FIGHT CLIMATE HYSTERIA

MSLF's Clients Battle for Access to Oil & Gas

Environmental groups may not use global warming hysteria to kill oil and gas leasing throughout the Mountain West, two oil and gas associations asserted in separate filings in federal district courts in New Mexico and Montana. The actions by the associations come as the “consensus” regarding “global warming” or—in a shift of phrase to accommodate ever increasing public skepticism about “warming” —“climate change” disintegrates.

The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico (IPANM), a non-profit organization formed in 1978 that protects and defends the interests of independent oil and natural gas producers, their employees and service companies, and the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS), which was formed in 1974 and includes more than 400 independent oil and natural gas producers, service and supply companies, banking and financial institutions, and industry consultants committed to environmentally responsible oil and natural gas development in the Intermountain West, each filed motions to intervene in lawsuits filed by environmental groups in New Mexico and Montana. Both associations aver that their members, who won the legal rights to scores of oil and gas leases issued by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), will be affected adversely by the lawsuits filed by the environmental groups, which seek to void the leases. The environmental groups claim that the BLM had a duty to investigate the amount of green house gases likely to be generated by the use of the leases and the impact of those gases on so-called global warming and climate change. The two oil and gas associations argue that the BLM has no such duty under federal law.

In March 2008, six environmental groups protested the BLM’s New Mexico oil and gas lease sale of April 2008. Claiming that upstream oil and gas production emits greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus contributes to global warming and climate change, the groups argued that the BLM should have addressed global warming issues at length in the environmental documents the BLM is required to prepare before issuing the leases.

On July 11, 2008, the BLM dismissed the groups’ protest, concluding that the groups “have not alleged . . . nor demonstrated by competent evidence that BLM’s decision . . . violated any law. [] The protest fails to identify any specific effect on global warming or climate change that will result from leasing the protested parcels. Further the protest fails to identify any change in the affected environment in which the action will occur that would alter our analysis of the other effects of the leasing action.”

On January 14, 2009, the groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the BLM’s April 2008 lease sale, which includes 43 lease parcels totaling 28,729.51 acres, and the July 2008 sale, which includes 49 lease parcels totaling 39,946.12 acres. The groups seek to set aside the BLM’s actions and void the leases. Meanwhile in March, May, August, and October, 2008, three environmental groups protested several of the BLM’s Montana oil and gas lease sales held in 2008. In October 2008, the BLM dismissed the groups’ protests on the same basis as had the New Mexico BLM. On December 17, 2008, the groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the BLM’s April 2008 lease sale, which includes 10 lease parcels totaling 6,050.34 acres; its June 2008 lease sale, which includes 24 lease parcels totaling 11,289.77 acres; its August 2008 lease sale, which includes 12 of 15 lease parcels totaling 7,957.42 acres; and, its November 2008 lease sale, which includes 17 leases totaling 14,879.31 acres. As in the New Mexico lawsuit, the environmental groups seek to set aside the BLM’s actions and void the leases.

According to the most recent public opinion polls, more Americans are skeptical about the seriousness of global warming than ever before and global warming ranks dead last in a poll of the issues of concern to Americans!