A federal appellate court in San Francisco on May 28 denied the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ emergency request to allow oil and gas pipeline builders to use an expedited nationwide permit for minimally invasive discharges into route water crossings while judges consider a federal government appeal of a lower court’s April ruling that the permit is not legal.
The appellate court said the government was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its appeal of a Montana district court’s decision that the Corps violated the Endangered Species Act when it reissued the NWP-12 permit in 2017 for the Keystone oil pipeline.