The fossil fuel industry is testing whether the White House’s decision to scrap its National Environmental Policy Act regulations could quash a pending lawsuit seeking more substantive environmental review of an offshore lease sale.
In a letter Friday to a federal district court, the American Petroleum Institute and Chevron USA argued that environmental groups no longer have grounds for their challenge of the NEPA analysis of an offshore oil and gas lease sale, now that the White House Council on Environmental Quality no longer has binding rules for how agencies should comply with the bedrock environmental statute.
“The withdrawal of the legal bases for Plaintiffs’ lawsuit is fatal,” the industry groups told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The letter was filed as part of a challenge over the NEPA review for the congressionally mandated Lease Sale 259 in the Gulf of Mexico, recently renamed the Gulf of America by President Donald Trump.
