Trump’s Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful, Federal Judge Finds

WASHINGTON — In a major legal blow to President Trump’s push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Mr. Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.

Barrow, Alaska, off the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean.
A federal judge ruled that an order by President Trump
lifting an Obama-era ban on Arctic Ocean drilling was unlawful.

The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Barack Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawal from drilling of about 120 million acres of Arctic Ocean and about 3.8 million acres in the Atlantic “will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress.” She wrote that an April 2017 executive order by Mr. Trump revoking the drilling ban “is unlawful, as it exceeded the president’s authority.”

The decision, which is expected to be appealed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, immediately reinstates the drilling ban on most of the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska, a pristine region home to endangered species including polar bears and bowhead whales where oil companies have long sought to drill. Along the Atlantic coast, it blocks drilling around a series of coral canyons that run from Norfolk, Va., to the Canadian border which are home to unique deepwater corals and rare fish species.

Read the story from The New York Times by Coral Davenport - “Trump’s Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful, Federal Judge Finds."

Judge Rejects Exxon's Attempt to Shut Down Climate Fraud Investigations

With a sharp rebuke, a federal judge on Thursday rejected Exxon's attempt to shut down two state investigations into whether the oil giant misled investors for years about the risks of climate change.

The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts are
 investigating whether Exxon's questioning of climate change
science and downplaying of its risks constituted fraud against the public and investors. 

U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni dismissed Exxon's complaint with prejudice, meaning the company can't refile it.

In the first line of her ruling, the judge describe Exxon's actions as "running roughshod over the adage that the best defense is a good offense.”

"The relief requested by Exxon in this case is extraordinary: Exxon has asked two federal courts—first in Texas, now in New York—to stop state officials from conducting duly-authorized investigations into potential fraud," she wrote. "It has done so on the basis of extremely thin allegations and speculative inferences.”

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Judge Rejects Exxon's Attempt to Shut Down Climate Fraud Investigations.”