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Guardians Files Legal Appeal to Block Sale of New Mexico Public Lands for Fracking

Date
October 21, 2020
Contact
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, (303) 437-7663, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
In This Release
Climate + Energy  
#JustTransition, #KeepItInTheGround
Santa Fe, NM–WildEarth Guardians this week filed a legal appeal to block the Trump administration’s sale of nearly 70,000 acres of public lands for fracking in southeast New Mexicos’ Permian Basin.

“We can’t frack our way to a safe climate,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. “This case is about holding our federal government accountable to the realities of our climate crisis and the need to rein in fossil fuel production and carbon pollution.”

Filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Guardians latest legal action seeks to overturn a federal District Court ruling upholding the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s sale of public lands for fracking in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park region.

Guardians originally filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico to overturn the Trump administration in 2019.  The lawsuit targeted the failure of the Bureau of Land Management to address the climate consequences of authorizing more oil and gas extraction and the greenhouse gas pollution that would result.

In August of 2020, the court denied the lawsuit. Guardians is now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to reverse the District Court’s ruling.

“The District Court just got this one wrong,” said Nichols.  “In selling public lands for fracking, the Bureau of Land Management denied science, denied facts, and denied reality. We just can’t let this stand.”

The Permian Basin of southeast New Mexico has seen a surge in oil and gas extraction in recent years.  Spurred by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the oil and gas industry has transformed the region into the world’s largest oil producer.

There are now more than 50,000 oil and gas wells in the area, which has also turned the region into a massive source of climate pollution.

The Bureau of Land Management estimates oil and gas production just on public lands (which comprises 40% of all oil and gas development in the region) unleashes more than 60.9 million metric tons of climate pollution annually.

This includes 13 million metric tons of carbon released just from on-the-ground production activities in the region and 47.9 million metric tons of carbon released when the produced oil and gas is consumed.  99% of this climate pollution is carbon dioxide, not methane.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas equivalency calculator, 60.9 million metric tons of carbon equals the amount released in a year by more than 15 coal-fired power plants.

Recent reports indicate that unchecked fracking in the entire Permian Basin will unleash more than 55 billion metric tons of carbon by 2050, exhausting 10% of the global carbon budget needed to limit worldwide average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit will most likely rule on WildEarth Guardians appeal in 2021.

Fracking in the Permian Basin of southeast New Mexico.