Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management over drilling permits it approved in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
The lawsuit — led by Earthjustice — argues BLM did not consider the cumulative environmental harms of greenlighting 25 new oil wells from Holmes Western Oil and four new oil wells from Chevron. The agency approved the permits under the Biden administration.
“There’s really no regional analysis in the San Joaquin Valley of the impact of oil drilling on pollution,” said Michelle Ghafar, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, who is leading the case.
The lawsuit claims that BLM did not conduct a cumulative water scarcity analysis or cumulative greenhouse gas emissions analysis on a regional or national scale. BLM’s calculations for these permits also employed “an incorrect methodology for calculating emissions” and did not provide “any substantiation for the emissions assumptions,” the lawsuit said.
