US judge suspends Alaska Cook Inlet lease, pending additional environmental review

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An environmental review underpinning a 2022 oil and gas lease sale in Alaska failed to properly analyze the potential impacts on endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales, a federal judge has ruled in suspending the lone lease stemming from that sale.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, in a decision Tuesday, found the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed in its analysis of the impact of ship noise on Cook Inlet beluga whales, which are listed as protected under the Endangered Species Act.

She also found problematic the agency's lumping together of the beluga whales and other marine mammals when weighing cumulative impacts, noting that the Cook Inlet belugas “have been impacted differently than other marine mammals in Cook Inlet by past actions” and that the agency should have considered cumulative impacts of leasing activities on them separately.

Gleason, who is based in Alaska, declined to vacate the lease sale, as the conservation groups who sued over the sale had requested. Instead, she suspended the lease issued in the sale pending a supplemental environmental review that addresses the issues she identified.

The Interior Department had no comment, said Giovanni Rocco, an agency spokesperson; the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management falls under Interior. An email seeking comment was sent to a spokesperson for Hilcorp Alaska LLC, which submitted the only bid in the 2022 lease sale. Hilcorp is the major natural gas producer in Cook Inlet.

The conservation groups had signaled their intent to sue over the lease sale days before it was held.

Carole Holley, an attorney with Earthjustice involved in the litigation, called Tuesday's ruling a victory for Alaska communities, beluga whales and “future generations who will face a hotter planet.”

“We’re celebrating the fact that this destructive lease sale has been sent back to the drawing board, and we will continue to push for a transition away from fossil fuels and toward a brighter and healthier energy future," Holley said in a statement.

In May 2022, the Interior Department said it would not move forward with the proposed Cook Inlet sale due to a “lack of industry interest in leasing in the area," according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. But Congress later passed legislation calling for a lease sale in Cook Inlet by the end of 2022 and two lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023. Those provisions were part of a sprawling package that also included major investments in efforts to fight climate change.

Cook Inlet is Alaska's oldest producing oil and gas basin, where production peaked in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Alaska's most populous region relies on natural gas from Cook Inlet. The state has also seen low interest in its recent Cook Inlet lease sales.