Court Opinion

ID: 9467146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:39:43.47906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:11.171861
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in Judge Leventhal’s opinion but write separately to underscore a few points *762of extreme importance in this case, which may be considered in the course of any trial on the merits.
The 1978 amendments to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act aimed at comprehensive reform of traditional oil leasing practices of the United States. The legislators were motivated to act by their concern that the nearly exclusive use of the traditional cash bonus-fixed royalty bidding system was not operating in the best interest of the public. They fixed three goals in the new Act relevant here, goals which in practice might conflict but which they expected to be accommodated by the Secretary of Interior’s discretion; a system of leasing which would provide fast, efficient exploitation of our energy resources, a fair market value return for the people of the United States, and improved competition among the lessees. The Act clearly envisioned prompt experimentation with a variety of methods of leasing to see which would best operate in practice to meet all three goals. 43 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1). A few of these methods had been tried sporadically under the old Act. Others, primarily the profit sharing option, showed promise but had never been tried by the United States. The statute specifically required the Secretary of the Interior to develop and submit to Congress a comprehensive 5-year leasing program within nine months after the Act became effective, 43 U.S.C. § 1344(c)(3), and it is a fair inference that Congress intended he should be able to pick and choose between the various leasing methods authorized in the new Act as soon as possible after the plan was approved in order to “assure receipt of fair market value for the lands leased.” § 1344(a)(4). In the course of this experimentation, considerable discretion would be necessarily vested in the Secretary to balance a variety of goals and policies. But by the very terms of the Act no meaningful experimentation can begin until the regulations under which the new leasing methods will operate have been promulgated. Defendants’ immediate responsibility is to promulgate the necessary regulations as rapidly as possible in order to implement Congress’ reform goals.*
An important trust has been given to the defendants here, since through inordinate delay the entire purpose of the Act could be frustrated and in the meantime, according to disturbing estimates submitted by the plaintiffs, the government and ultimately the taxpayers may be losing hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenues with each sale. There are also troublesome indications in this record that the delay which has already occurred is due not only to the complexity of the defendants’ task in promulgating new regulations, but to a jurisdictional squabble between agencies over control of the process of leasing our offshore oil and gas fields.
The majority opinion, in which I concur, concludes that at this time and in this posture of the case, the Secretary of Interior has not contravened “the letter of the law.” Nevertheless, the time may be approaching when the Secretary, by continuing to grant leases without utilization of the panoply of experimental bidding systems authorized by the Act, is frustrating the essential experimental purpose of the Act and thus abusing the discretion which has been granted him. At this point, on this record, the delay is not clearly unreasonable, but the more sales of leases which are held without promulgation of the new regulations which are necessary before the congressionally-mandated program of reform can get underway, the more unreasonable the delay appears. As the Court’s opinion points out in its concluding paragraph, leases once submitted for bids, much less granted, are virtually impossible to withdraw, no matter how detrimental to the public interest they turn out to be. Certainly these new bidding procedures are complicated, but our energy program is a matter of the highest priority, and the new Act was passed well over a year ago.

 On December 6, 1979, just prior to issuance of this opinion, a notice of proposed rulemaking was published, inviting comment and announcing hearings on regulations to cover one new bidding method: cash bonus bidding—fixed net profit sharing. 44 Fed.Reg. 70,390 (1979).