Two environmental groups have filed a new legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of a proposed multibillion-dollar project that would send Alaska North Slope natural gas to overseas markets.
In a petition filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club argued that federal agencies failed to properly consider harms that the massive gas project would cause to Endangered Species Act-listed animals living in the affected marine areas: polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and Eastern North Pacific right whales.
The petition was filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.
The Biden administration last year renewed an earlier approval of exports from the project, which has been pursued in various forms since the 1970s but never built.
The current plan, promoted by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corp., proposes a 42-inch-diameter pipeline running about 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to Cook Inlet, where a new facility would liquefy the gas and load it onto tankers for export to Asian markets.
The Biden administration’s most recent approval, which follows numerous other permits and approvals over the years, was based on flawed biological reviews, the environmental groups argued in their May 30 filing.
“The rubber-stamp approval of the Alaska LNG project was reckless in many ways,” Sierra Club Alaska Chapter Director Andrea Feniger said in a statement. “The project will be devastating to vulnerable wildlife already struggling to face the catastrophic impacts of climate change.”
The lawsuit comes about a week after a different case was filed that challenges the project. On May 22, a group of young Alaskans sued the state to block the project because of its anticipated carbon emissions and impact to climate change. That case was filed in Alaska Superior Court in Anchorage.
The cases are unrelated and the timing of the two is coincidental, said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The environmental groups’ legal claim was filed directly in the appeals court, bypassing lower courts, in accordance with the Natural Gas Act, Monsell said.
A previous lawsuit challenging the export approval was filed last August by the same environmental groups in a different court. That challenge, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Department of Energy, alleged that federal approval decisions overlooked climate and non-climate environmental impacts of the project. That lawsuit remains pending; the most recent action was a series of briefs filed by opposing parties earlier this month.
State, federal and industry officials have for decades pursued plans for pipelines to send that natural gas to markets, but none has proved economically feasible. The Alaska Gasline Development Corp. estimates its plan would cost more than $40 billion, though that has not been updated to reflect the high inflation of recent years for construction projects.
Despite years of efforts, the corporation has no investors, partners or customers for the project, which has been almost entirely state funded since 2016.
The Alaska Legislature appropriated several million dollars this year to continue the state-owned corporation’s operations.
Reporter James Brooks contributed to this article. The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.
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