(Newsroom America) -- A federal judge on Friday threw out rules imposed by the Obama administration to put the brakes on expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on land belonging to the federal government. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of petroleum industry group Western Energy Alliance in federal court in Cheyenne, Wyo., in the group's lawsuit against the Obama administration and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The administration had dismissed Bush-era rules that allowed for expedited oil and gas drilling under categorical exclusions provisions on all federal lands, but Freudenthal's ruling reinstated them.
The administration argued that the group had failed to show how the new rules, implemented last year by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, caused delays and increased drilling costs. "Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury," Freudenthal said in rejecting the administration's argument. "Those injuries are supported by the administrative record." The government declined to comment on the ruling, but Kathleen Sgamma, the Denver-based group's director of government and public affairs, said the court made the right decision.
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