Washington • A federal judge’s ruling to halt new oil and gas leases and review hundreds of others in Wyoming doesn’t directly impact Utah but could lead to new legal challenges of leases in the state.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled Wednesday that the Bureau of Land Management should consider how emissions from oil and gas leases affect climate change.
“Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land,” Contreras wrote.