The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a 2022 Ninth Circuit ruling that barred fracking offshore California. The decision leaves in place a 2019 court order that banned fracking offshore until federal agencies complete the required environmental studies.
The case arose when environmental groups learned that the Interior Department had issued 51 fracking permits in federal waters off California without conducting an environmental review. In 2014, the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) sued to halt fracking in the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf off the coast of California. In 2016, environmental groups, along with the State of California and the California Coastal Commission, brought additional actions alleging that the federal agencies violated environmental laws when they authorized unconventional oil drilling methods on offshore platforms in federal waters.
In June 2022, in American Petroleum Institute v. Environmental Defense Center, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the federal government had violated the Endangered Species Act and Coastal Zone Management Act by issuing permits for “well stimulation” through hydraulic fracturing for the area. The court also found that the Interior Department failed to conduct the required environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.
More specifically, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government must complete a full environmental review before approving permits for offshore oil drilling platforms. The decision prevented the Interior Department and other federal agencies from issuing fracking permits until a complete environmental impact statement is issued “rather than the inadequate [environmental assessment] on which they had relied.”
The Ninth Circuit held that the agencies “did not take the ‘hard look’ mandated by NEPA. They relied on flawed assumptions in the EA that distorted and rendered irrational their finding of no significant impact.” The court held that this “failure to take the requisite ‘hard look’ renders the EA inadequate under NEPA.” The agencies should have “prepared a full EIS in light of the unknown risks posed by the well stimulation treatments and the significant data gaps that the agencies acknowledged.”
In January, the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and Dos Cuadras Offshore Resources petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case. The oil companies argued that the fracking ban would “undermine the development of oil, natural gas, and renewable energy on the entire Outer Continental Shelf.”
California legislators have repeatedly introduced legislation to ban offshore drilling in state waters. In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-79-20, which stated that California “must focus on the impacts of oil extraction as it transitions away from fossil fuel, by working to end the issuance of new hydraulic fracturing permits by 2024.” In April 2021, he directed the state’s Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management (CalGEM) Division to begin regulatory action to end the issuance of new fracking permits, including offshore in state waters, by January 2024.
(See also California’s Energy Transition from Oil State to Fossil Free: Introduction Part Three—Offshore Drilling)