A lawsuit filed this month is targeting former President Trump’s energy policies, specifically ones that allowed an increase in oil and gas leases issued in the Vernal and Moab BLM field offices. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance filed the complaint in Central Utah’s U.S. District Court, challenging leases mostly found in the Book Cliffs and Uinta Basin covering over 215,000 acres. A Deseret News report shares that of the 145 leases in question, only one has actually been drilled and in the state of Utah as a whole, less than half of all leases have been drilled. Still, an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance claims that “the mere idea that sometime in the unknown future an operator may or may not drill is enough reason for the agency to not protect the area.” The BLM has not provided a response yet to the lawsuit’s claims.
