Lawsuit Challenges Federal Approvals for New Oil, Gas Drilling on California Public Lands 

Health and conservation groups sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management yesterday, challenging its approvals of new oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Despite an ongoing legal challenge to its permitting system in the region, the BLM continues to hand over drilling permits to fossil fuel companies at the expense of public health, the environment, and the law.   

The BLM has never analyzed the cumulative harms of its oil and gas well approvals on nearby communities and the environment in the San Joaquin Valley. In the past two months, the agency has approved 25 permits for new wells near Maricopa and four more permits for new wells near Lost Hills. Instead of considering the collective impacts that nearly 30 more wells would have in the region, the BLM unlawfully divided them into multiple smaller permit packages and obscured the larger harms of its approvals in one of the most polluted areas of the country. 

Most of the new wells will be drilled near homes and residential areas, in direct violation of California’s new oil and gas setbacks law that prohibits drilling within 3,200 feet of sensitive locations to protect public health. The BLM also rubber-stamped its approvals without allowing public comment, in violation of federal law. 

“We’re going back to court for what are now becoming routine violations and disregard of our country’s laws and California’s Valley communities. The law requires the BLM to look at big-picture pollution impacts when it approves a bunch of new drilling permits in the same oil fields on the same day. These wells don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do the people who are forced to endure years of polluted air that makes them and their families sick,” said Michelle Ghafar, Earthjustice attorney.   

The San Joaquin Valley is the most polluted air basin in the country, with oil and gas extraction a major contributor to this pollution. The dirty air has caused devastating health harms in Valley communities, where residents suffer the most asthma-related emergency room visits, heart attacks, and low birth-weight infants in the state of California. These impacts are particularly acute the closer people live and work to drilling activity. 

Earthjustice is representing the Center for Biological Diversity, The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, and Central California Asthma Collaborative in today’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Eastern District Court of California. The groups are asking the court to pause drilling at the sites associated with the permits, pending resolution of this case and the BLM’s compliance with federal laws, including: the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Mineral Leasing Act.  

Many of the same groups are already suing the BLM in the same court for similar permit approvals in this region. The agency barreled ahead with the new permits without waiting for the court to resolve the ongoing litigation or fixing the flaws in its permit system. 

“From air and water risks to harming people and wildlife, Big Oil has done more than enough destruction in this overburdened region,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth. “Today’s filing is part of a long series of lawsuits against the BLM for greenlighting more oil and gas activity in Kern County. We will keep the fire lit until our objections are finally heard and this permitting stops for good.”

“The science is clear: oil and gas drilling can leak methane and other toxins that poison the air, water, and soil,” said Jasmine Vazin, Deputy Director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign. “The San Joaquin Valley deserves better—BLM needs to follow the law and put residents first.”

“Fossil-fueled climate change is causing death and destruction in California right now. We need to be pumping less oil, not more, to turn that around,” said David Pettit, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Approving more oil and gas drilling in California flies in the face of law and science, both of which demand that the Bureau of Land Management deny these permits.”

“San Joaquin Valley communities experience some of the dirtiest air in the nation and the BLM is complicit because it continues to rubber-stamp oil and gas drilling without notifying the public or adequately considering the health and well-being of local residents,” said Gregg DeBie, Senior Staff Attorney at The Wilderness Society. “BLM’s actions are illegal, and with this lawsuit we intend to hold the agency accountable to the law.”

“We are concerned for the health and wellbeing of our asthma patients, staff, and community partners who are constantly exposed to unhealthy air, water, and effects of climate change as a result of substandard environmental protections in their region–especially in Kern County where the oil and gas industry has largely gone under-regulated,” said Sarah Sharpe, Deputy Director of Central California Asthma Collaborative. “BLM approving these drilling permits in violation of federal law only exacerbates these problems in Valley communities that can least afford it.”

Background 

This lawsuit is not the first time a court has been asked to step in to stop the BLM from authorizing an expansion of oil and gas drilling on public lands in California without accounting for air and water pollution, health, and climate impacts. Earlier litigation filed by Earthjustice successfully challenged the BLM’s failure to analyze the cumulative harms of oil and gas extraction in Central California. Pursuant to legal agreements filed in summer 2022, the BLM agreed to complete a proper environmental review for the region, which it has yet to complete.  

Despite this lack of a proper review, the agency has continued to approve new drilling in the region. As a result, in June 2023, many of the same groups sued the BLM for drilling permits it approved throughout 2023 and 2024 in the San Joaquin Valley. The lawsuit, Center for Biological Diversity, et al. v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, et al., is ongoing before the U.S. District Court.