A federal judge this week found the Biden administration at least partly to blame in a dispute over the Interior Department’s legal obligation to hold regular oil and gas lease sales on public lands — even as the court upheld the agency’s power to determine when to offer land for development.
Chief Judge Scott Skavdahl of the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming on Tuesday found that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management provided “no basis or reasoning” for declining to hold a lease sale in the Equality State in the third quarter of 2022.
“Silence does not suffice,” said Skavdahl, an Obama pick.
But the judge stopped short of finding the agency had acted inappropriately by not offering lease sales on public lands across the United States within a two-year period, citing lack of standing.
