Native Village of Point Hope v. Salazar

In 2002, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) established a lease sale for the exploration and development of the Alaska continental shelf’s oil and gas reserves. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) required Shell Offshore, Inc. (Shell), the winning bidder, to obtain the secretary of the interior’s (the secretary) (defendant) approval of an exploration plan, approval of an oil-spill response plan under the Clean Water Act (CWA), and other CWA permits. Shell submitted an initial exploration plan (the pre-2011 plan). In response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the secretary reorganized the exploration-plan approval process. Consistent with the new requirements, in 2011, Shell submitted a revised plan (the 2011 plan) to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). BOEM approved the 2011 plan subject to 11 conditions, including required technical demonstrations of the plan’s oil-spill response capacities to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). In March 2012, BSEE approved Shell’s revised oil-spill response plan. Invoking the appellate court’s original jurisdiction under the OCSLA, an Indigenous tribe and environmental groups (the challengers) (plaintiffs) filed expedited petitions for review, alleging that BOEM had failed to explain how the agency reconciled conflicting statements between the pre-2011 oil-spill response plan indicating that proven technology for well capping was unavailable with 2011 plan statements indicating that subsea capping equipment would be used if all other containment methods failed.