Viewpoint: Trump energy agenda to hinge on courts

President Donald Trump's push to open more federal to oil and gas development and roll back environmental regulations in 2019 will likely depend on how well the administration fares in court.

The administration next year aims to begin oil leasing in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), open areas for drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and hold the first lease sale in arctic waters since 2008. It is also trying to relax regulations for offshore drilling safety, methane emissions and fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.

But environmentalists and a coalition of states plan to fight those initiatives by filing lawsuits at each step of the process. Critics of the administration's energy policies will seek to replicate recent court victories, such as rulings that stopped work on the $8bn Keystone XL oil pipeline and the $7bn Atlantic Coast gas pipeline in part because of in sufficient environmental reviews.

The administration is further along with making regulatory changes. It is on track next month to partially roll back offshore safety rules adopted after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. By spring the administration wants to complete plans to freeze fuel-economy standards after 2020 and to cut the frequency of methane leak testing at newly built oil and gas facilities.

California attorney general Xavier Becerra, alongside other state officials and environmentalists, have fought those changes. They say the regulatory rollbacks are based on incomplete environmental reviews, arbitrary justification and, in some cases, information that has not been made public.

The rollback to methane testing requirements, for example, is based "entirely, without support, on the existence of ‘uncertainties' and ‘concerns' regarding the 2016 standard," Becerra wrote on 17 December in comments submitted alongside a dozen other states. A similar state coalition last year prevailed in a lawsuit against an effort to delay the same methane regulations.

It will take the administration until the second half of 2019 to complete ambitious plans to open more federal areas to drilling. The administration only last week issued draft reviews for leasing in the ANWR and has yet to do so for a plan for more leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. It is facing months of additional work before it can open offshore waters, including in the arctic waters of Beaufort and Chukchi seas, to leasing.

Environmentalists could face a higher bar fighting development in ANWR because leasing was required by lawmakers in 2017 through a sweeping tax cut bill. But they have raised complaints that the administration's existing leasing plans are at incompatible with legal requirements to protect endangered species and marine mammals.

The government shutdown that began on 22 December are likely to delay the administration's timelines for regulatory revisions and expanded oil and gas leasing. Trump on 25 December said he would not reopen the government until Democrats agree to his demands for increased funding for a wall on the Mexican border.