The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing to explain in its Record of Decision why it selected a project alternative that did not meet the development standard that it used to eliminate other alternatives. The court found, however, that BLM otherwise complied with NEPA and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and did not order BLM to vacate its project approval. Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Bureau of Land Management, 141 F.4th 976 (9th Cir. 2025).
In 2020, BLM approved the Willow Project, an oil and gas development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. A federal district court vacated this approval, finding that BLM violated NEPA. BLM prepared a Supplemental EIS in 2023 to address these deficiencies. The SEIS considered a range of alternative project components and analyzed four action alternatives, plus a no-action baseline.
The central issue in the case was whether BLM’s criteria for selecting action alternatives—specifically, its insistence on “full field development”—was consistent with NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This standard required that any alternative to the project could not leave behind an economically viable amount of oil.
Plaintiffs argued that BLM’s alternatives analysis was arbitrary because BLM used the full field development standard to screen out more environmentally protective alternatives but then approved a project that did not itself meet that standard, without explanation. Plaintiffs contended this violated NEPA’s requirement to rigorously explore reasonable alternatives and foster informed decision-making.
The court found that one of BLM's reasons for adopting this standard—to avoid segmenting the project's environmental review into smaller, "piecemeal" analyses—was a reasonable exercise of its discretion. However, the court held that BLM violated NEPA and the APA by failing to explain in the Record of Decision why it approved a project alternative that did not meet the full field development standard used to eliminate other alternatives. The court held that BLM’s failure to explain its departure from this standard was arbitrary and capricious under the APA, as agencies must provide a reasoned explanation for changes in position. The court emphasized that while BLM may use the full field development standard, it must explain any deviation to satisfy the APA.
Plaintiffs also argued that BLM failed to clearly estimate and present the greenhouse gas emissions that could result from future oil development made possible by the Willow Project. Plaintiffs claimed that, under NEPA, BLM should have specifically identified these potential emissions as indirect effects of the Project, rather than only including them in a broader cumulative impacts analysis, so that the public and decisionmakers could fully understand the Project’s environmental consequences. The court disagreed, holding that NEPA does not require BLM to separately analyze indirect and cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. Because BLM estimated future emissions in its cumulative impacts analysis, it fully satisfied NEPA’s requirements.
Finally, the court addressed a claim under the Endangered Species Act, holding BLM was not arbitrary or capricious in deciding not to formally expand consultation with USFWS and NMFS regarding the effects of the Project’s greenhouse gas emissions on listed species and their critical habitats. BLM provided a rational explanation for its conclusion that a sufficiently direct causal link between the project-specific emissions and effects on species could not be established to warrant further consultation under the regulations.
The court remanded the matter to BLM without vacating the project approval, finding that the sole NEPA error was procedural and minor, and that vacating the decision would have severe disruptive consequences.
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