A legal settlement means feds will revisit the practice of leasing mineral rights to drill for oil.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management owns more of Monterey County than meets the eye. Its holdings include underground mineral rights. Back in 2017, the BLM’s regional office undertook a planning process for its federal mineral estate, parts of which the agency routinely auctions off to leaseholders seeking the rights to drill.

The agency’s analysis settled on a preferred plan to auction off rights to 398,600 acres, but BLM instead adopted a more industry-friendly plan for 725,500 acres. In 2019, the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club sued BLM in federal court. In 2020, Monterey County joined the nonprofits as a plaintiff, sparked in part by voter-approved Measure Z, which bans fracking – one grievance in the lawsuit is that BLM failed to analyze the potential impacts of fracking.

All of this came after a separate case in 2011, in which the court ordered a moratorium on leases in Monterey and Fresno counties without analyzing fracking. But new leadership meant a change of heart: “The Trump administration decided it would start doing leases again, and did a half-assed environmental review,” says Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director at the Climate Law Institute of the Center for Biological Diversity.

On Dec. 6, the court approved a settlement agreement in which BLM commits to revisiting its analysis. (BLM declined to comment for this story.)

It’s unknown what the new analysis will find, but Golden-Krasner hopes it will shrink the oil industry footprint: “We think that if they actually do a thorough environmental review of the climate impacts, they would find there are just too many impacts, and on that basis they should stop issuing new leases.”