## Facts

- Conservation organizations challenged federal approval of two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico conducted after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.
- BOEM administers Outer Continental Shelf leasing under a multi-stage process and must comply with NEPA and the ESA.
- After the spill, BOEM reinitiated ESA consultation with NMFS to update an existing Biological Opinion for Gulf oil and gas activities.
- Before NMFS completed the updated Biological Opinion, BOEM proceeded with the lease sales.
- For NEPA compliance, BOEM prepared a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) addressing deepwater drilling and catastrophic spill impacts; it discussed Deepwater Horizon extensively.
- BOEM did not include the Deepwater Horizon spill as a data point in an updated quantitative oil-spill risk table, reasoning the event was an outlier that would skew probabilistic estimates.
- Plaintiffs sued under NEPA, the ESA, and the APA, asserting the SEIS was inadequate and the agencies acted unlawfully by proceeding with leasing during reinitiated consultation and by failing to timely complete a new Biological Opinion.
- The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment under the APA’s arbitrary-and-capricious standard.

## Issues

1. Whether BOEM violated NEPA by excluding the Deepwater Horizon spill from a quantitative spill-risk table while otherwise addressing the spill in the SEIS.
2. Whether BOEM violated the ESA by proceeding with lease sales during reinitiated consultation before NMFS issued a revised Biological Opinion.
3. Whether NMFS violated the APA through its timing and handling of the post-spill ESA consultation and revised Biological Opinion process.

## Decision

- The court granted summary judgment to federal defendants and intervenor-defendants and denied plaintiffs’ motion.
- The court held BOEM’s SEIS complied with NEPA because it took a hard look at spill impacts and reasonably explained its technical choice to treat Deepwater Horizon as an outlier for the specific quantitative table.
- The court held BOEM did not violate the ESA by proceeding with lease sales during reinitiated consultation because the existing Biological Opinion remained operative and reinitiation did not automatically bar continued agency action.
- The court rejected the APA claim against NMFS, finding no basis to deem NMFS’s consultation timeline unlawfully unreasonable given the scientific and analytical demands after the spill.

## Legal Principles

- Under the APA, a court sets aside agency action only if it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law; review is deferential when the agency examines relevant data and offers a reasoned explanation.
- NEPA requires a “hard look” at environmental consequences but does not mandate a particular methodology; agencies have discretion in technical modeling if the overall analysis addresses the relevant risks.
- An agency may reasonably treat an extreme event as a statistical outlier for a specific probabilistic tool while still satisfying NEPA through qualitative analysis and other modeling addressing catastrophic scenarios.
- Reinitiation of ESA consultation does not, by itself, invalidate an existing Biological Opinion or impose an automatic halt on related agency actions when the existing opinion remains in effect and applicable conditions continue to govern.

## Conclusion

The court upheld BOEM’s post-Deepwater Horizon lease sales, concluding that BOEM’s supplemental NEPA analysis reasonably addressed catastrophic spill risks despite excluding the spill from one quantitative table, and that BOEM and NMFS acted lawfully under the ESA and APA while consultation was reinitiated and a revised Biological Opinion was pending.


Oceana, Inc. v. Bureau of Ocean Energy Mgmt., 37 F. Supp. 3d 147 (D.D.C. 2014)