The case is part of a broader effort by environmentalists challenging the administration’s oil and gas leasing practices within the habitat of the ground-dwelling greater sage grouse.
The ruling means any future sales on more than 100,000 square miles of sage grouse habitat also would require the longer public comment period, said Talasi Brooks with the Western Watersheds Project, one of the groups that challenged the lease sales with a federal lawsuit. Cancelling the leases “would require BLM to refund over $125 million worth of revenues to the purchasers,” attorneys for Wyoming and the Western Energy Alliance said in a joint court filing.About half of lease sale proceeds are distributed to the states where the sales occur. That includes more than $44 million received by Wyoming, the attorneys said.
Bush said he had considered the “undeniably significant” economic effects of voiding the lease sales. But he said allowing the leases to stand would provide incentive for the government to approve potentially illegal projects out of the hope that they would be “too massive to unwind.”
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