American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017 - 28

states to take over royalty collections on
federal lands within their borders.
HR 3565 specifies that a state may
petition the secretaries of interior and
agriculture to assume jurisdiction over
the leasing, permitting and regulation of
oil and gas exploration, development and
production activities on non-Indian federal
lands within their borders.
The bill also stipulates that state programs granted primacy will not be subject
to NEPA, the Administrative Procedure
Act or Endangered Species Act. HR 3565
also provides that in the event a state
regulatory program results in a 20 percent
decrease from the preceding year in royalties paid to the federal government, the
state shall have 180 days to address the
deficiency or the federal agencies may
revoke its primacy.
HR 2907, according to Congressman
Tipton's office, requires the United States
to develop an all-of-the-above approach
for meeting the nation's projected energy

demand for the next 30 years. It directs
the departments of Interior and Agriculture
to develop four-year production plans
based on Energy Information Administration projections, and to include wind,
solar, hydropower, geothermal, oil, natural
gas, coal and oil shale sources of energy.
By giving states the option to collect
their own federal mineral royalties, Representative Cheney says HR 2661 would
eliminate the 2 percent collection fee charged
by the federal government, which she says
amounts to about $40 million a year.
Adds Senator Michael Enzi, R-Wy.,
who introduced a companion bill, S 1267,
"Mineral royalties are supposed to be
split 50-50, but by charging an unfair
collection fee, the federal government is
squeezing the states for more dollars."
ANWR Exploration
In one administrative development,
newspaper stories published in September drew attention to an Aug. 11

memo from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Acting Director James W. Kurth to the
agency's Alaska regional director that
the newspapers say would lay the
groundwork for drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
Kurth's memo states, "USFWS has
been asked by the U.S. DOI to update
the regulations concerning geological
and geophysical exploration of the
(ANWR coastal plain). Specifically, we
are to update the regulations at 37 CFR
21 that restrict the dates when an application for an exploration plan may be
submitted. When finalized, the new regulation will allow for applicants to
submit requests for approval of new exploration plans."
§ 37.21 allows applicants to submit
ANWR exploration plans between Oct.
1, 1984, and May 31, 1986. Attached to
Kurth's memo was a copy of the regulation
with those calendar restraints deleted.

Climate Lawsuits Move Opposite Ways
Two U.S. courts of appeal have taken
different sides recently on activists' climate
related lawsuits.
Published reports say the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled
Sept. 15 that the Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately consider
the climate impacts of coal leases it
granted in Wyoming's Powder River
Basin. On the other side of the coin, an
article posted Sept. 11 by The Heartland
Institute hails a temporary stay imposed
by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th
Circuit in a lawsuit filed by 21 youths
who contend the federal government
failed to protect them from the effects of
climate change.
Meanwhile, other reports note that
two environmental groups sued the Bureau
of Land Management in September over
oil and gas leases in northern Nevada,
and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, Ca., each filed lawsuits against five
oil companies, contending they knowingly
contributed to climate change to the cities'
detriment.
WildEarth Guardians et al v. BLM,
"may provide ammunition to groups challenging environmental reviews of oil, gas
and coal leases for not considering the
impacts on climate change," opines one
published report. WildEarth Guardians
and the Sierra Club had challenged four
leases that authorized expanding the Black
28 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Thunder and North Antelope-Rochelle
coal mines near Wright, Wy.
The report says that in reversing and
remanding a decision upholding the leases
by the U.S. District Court for the District
of Wyoming, the 10th Circuit rejected
BLM's argument that the leases would
have no significant impact on carbon
dioxide emissions because if the coal
was not mined in the Powder River Basin,
the same amount of coal would be mined
elsewhere.
The 10th Circuit called that assumption
"irrational," and said it was "contrary to
basic supply and demand principles," the
report says.
Conversely, H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow on environmental policy at
The Heartland Institute, says a stay issued
July 25 by the 9th Circuit in Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana et al. v. the United
States of America et al could signal an
end to the lawsuit. Burnett quotes Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow
Chris Horner as saying, "It's entirely
possible the panel's ruling suggests the
end is near for this bizarre matter."
Burnett describes Kelsey Cascadia
Rose as a landmark climate lawsuit brought
in November 2015 by 21 youths backed
by environmental activist groups that
contended the government violated the
youths' constitutional rights by encouraging the use of fossil fuels, which they

said produced greenhouse gases that were
damaging the climate system.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 15, the Center
for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the
Sierra Club sued BLM over three leases
sold at auction in June in Nevada's Battle
Mountain district. CBD says the three
leases cover 5,760 of nearly 200,000
acres offered in the June auction, of
which CBD says nearly half were deferred
under the Obama administration "because
of environmental concerns."
CBD argues BLM "failed to consider
the potential consequences of oil drilling
in the area, from contamination of critical
desert water sources to emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases."
In separate lawsuits filed Sept. 20 in
their respective county courts, San Francisco and Oakland both sued Chevron
Corp., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Royal
Dutch Shell and British Petroleum. The
lawsuits claim damage from rising sea
levels caused by global warming.
A published report quotes Oakland
City Attorney Barbara Parker saying,
"These companies knew fossil fuel-driven
climate change was real, they knew it
was caused by their products and they
lied to cover up that knowledge. The
harm to our cities has commenced and
will only get worse."
However, an analysis by Nicholas S.
Preservati, an attorney with Spilman
American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2017

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