Judge faults NEPA analysis for massive Wyoming drilling project

This story was updated at 5:18 p.m. EDT.

A federal judge has found that the Interior Department did not do a good enough job of evaluating the environmental impact of a sprawling oil and gas development in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

In an order issued Friday, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sided with environmental groups and sent Interior’s Bureau of Land Management back to work on its National Environmental Policy Act review of the Converse County Oil and Gas Project’s impact on groundwater.

But the judge, an Obama appointee, stopped short of invalidating BLM’s Trump-era approval of the project, which would result in the drilling of about 500 wells per year over the course of a decade.