BLM sued for ignoring global warming tied to oil, gas leases

BILLINGS – Several conservation groups have sued the Bureau of Land Management, accusing the agency of failing to address global warming pollution they say is produced by oil and gas development on public lands in Montana.

The lawsuit, filed in District Court in Missoula on Wednesday, challenges four oil and gas lease sales the BLM held this year.

It claims the agency violated federal law by failing to prepare any environmental analysis to justify the lease sales and by relying on nearly 30-year-old decisions, which do not address global warming. The agency also allegedly failed to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

“The BLM has never been willing to take the reasonable and currently available steps to reduce global warming pollution from the oil and gas development industry. And it has the authority to do so,” said Jim Jensen, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Greg Albright, a BLM spokesman for the state office in Billings, said Thursday that the agency had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit.

The conservation groups say inefficient and wasteful practices while drilling for oil and gas produce methane, which they say is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The lawsuit also says that in Montana, oil and gas operations constitute about 12 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.