A federal appeals court is largely upholding the Interior Department’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, even as it ordered some supplemental environmental reviews.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Interior’s Bureau of Land Management failed to fully explain its rationale for selecting a scaled-back project design that included three drilling areas in the remote Arctic region.
“BLM’s lone error is at heart a procedural, not a substantive violation,” said Judge Ryan Nelson, a Trump appointee, writing the majority opinion for the court in the consolidated case.
“And while some procedural errors could be ‘serious,'” Nelson continued, “this one is not.”
