The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
LAFAYETTE DIVISION
WOODSIDE ENERGY AMERICAS INC CASE NO. 6:24-CV-01268
VERSUS JUDGE DAVID C. JOSEPH
U S DEPT OF THE INTERIOR ET AL MAGISTRATE JUDGE DAVID J. AYO
O R D E R
The above-captioned suit is among the most recent filed in the Western District of
Louisiana challenging agency decisions by the United States Department of the Interior
(“DOI”) regarding requests to exceed a regulatory allowance limitation and for royalty
refunds.1 In this and other such suits, plaintiffs are oil and gas leaseholders who allege
violations of the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §701, et seq., the Federal
Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act (“FOGRMA”), as amended by the Federal Oil and
Gas Royalty Simplification and Fairness Act of 1996, 30 U.S.C. §§ 1701, et seq., the
Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (“GAGAS”), 30 C.F.R. § 1206.20
(2023), and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States
Constitution. Specifically, plaintiffs, including Woodside Energy Americas, Inc.
(“Woodside”) allege that DOI began denying royalty refund requests based on deductions
for product transportation costs between the platform and the royalty measurement point
when, in past decisions, DOI has granted royalty refund requests on that basis. Plaintiffs
allege that such denials based on a departure without notice from past interpretations of its
1 Other, nearly identical suits pending before the Court include 23-CV-1231 Ecopetrol
America, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Interior; 23-CV-1232 Energy Partners, Ltd. v. Haaland; 23-CV-1314
Century Offshore Mgmt. Corp. v. Haaland; 23-CV-1317 M21K, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Interior; 23-CV-
1318 PetroQuest Energy, LLC v. Haaland; 23-CV-1324 Tana Exploration Co., LLC v. Haaland; 24-
CV-520 Century Exploration Ltd. Partnership v. U.S. Dept. of Interior; 24-CV-939 Ecopetrol America,
LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Interior.
own regulations amount to violations of the APA. Moreover, plaintiffs, including Woodside,
allege that the Director of the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (“ONRR”) and the
administrative law judges of the Interior Board of Land Review (“IBLR”) were appointed in
violation of the Appointments Clause, the separation of powers, and the Vesting Clause of
Article II of the United States Constitution.
Now before this Court is Woodside’s recent MOTION TO SEAL COMPLAINT. (Rec. Doc.
2). Woodside filed a redacted Complaint (Rec. Doc. 1) and the instant motion, to which an
unredacted copy of its Complaint is attached. Woodside’s motion seeks an order sealing the
unredacted Complaint from public viewing on the basis that, in its unredacted state, the
Complaint contains information properly regarded as trade secrets under the Defend Trade
Secrets Act (“DTSA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1832, 1836. Specifically, Woodside’s motion alleges the
Complaint “explains aspects of…proprietary methodology” developed by Woodside’s agent
and relied upon by Woodside in its applications for royalty refunds. (Rec. Doc. 2 at p. 2).
Additionally, Woodside alleges its unredacted Complaint contains
privileged commercial or financial information…geological and
geophysical information and data concerning
wells…information that concerns or relates to the identity,
confidential statistical data, amount or source of any income,
profits, losses, or expenditures of any person, firm, partnership,
corporation, or association, all of which are confidential trade
secrets and financial information that is not generally available
to the public or otherwise disclosed to anyone not employed or
retained by Woodside.
(Id. at pp. 3–4, citing 18 U.S.C. § 1905, 5 U.S.C. § 552).
Fifth Circuit jurisprudence emphasizes the right of the American people to access
judicial proceedings and the resulting presumption against the sealing of judicial records.
June Med. Servs., LLC v. Phillips, 22 F.4th 512, 519–20 (5th Cir. 2022); Binh Hoa Le v.
Exeter Fin. Corp., 990 F.3d 410, 418–19 (5th Cir. 2021) (citing Vantage Health Plan, Inc. v.
Willis-Knighton Med. Ctr., 913 F.3d 443, 450 (5th Cir. 2019)). Where important
considerations such as the protection of trade secrets or the identities of confidential
informants form the basis for motions to seal, courts must undertake a careful balancing
and must articulate the reasons for an order sealing all or a portion of a document. Bin
Hoa Le, supra, at 419 (citing S.E.C. v. Van Waeyenberghe, 990 F.2d 845, 849 (5th Cir.
1993)).
The undersigned has carefully reviewed the subject unredacted Complaint and finds
that the proposed redactions are of two varieties: (1) references to the adverse finding’s
interpretation of permissible deductions for “transportation” costs, and (2) references to
email communications among DOI employees regarding royalty rebate requests by
Woodside and other similarly situated applicants. Woodside’s motion alleges that content
in the first category constitutes trade secrets within the meaning of the DTSA. (Rec. Doc. 2
at pp. 3–4).
This Court finds that the information referencing DOI’s recent interpretation of
“transportation costs” does not contain information constituting a trade secret under
applicable law. To the extent that Woodside argues that its royalty refund application was
premised on classification of certain costs as “transportation” under the DOI’s former
interpretation of those costs, such information is not proprietary and is included without
redaction in other similar suits against DOI now pending before the Western District.2
Moreover, Woodside makes no showing that the underlying decision by DOI is not public
record. Indeed, the decision by the Director of ONRR and its basis is detailed in the DOI
orders attached to Woodside’s instant motion. (Rec. Docs. 2-1, 2-2). June Med. Servs., LLC,
2 See, e.g., Civ. Act. Nos. 23-CV-1230, 23-CV-1231, 23-CV-1314, 23-CV-1317, 23-CV-1318, and
23-CV-1327, in which plaintiffs’ complaints are not sealed. The undersigned notes that two suits,
Civ. Act. Nos. 24-CV-520 and 24-CV-939, do feature sealed complaints in which Plaintiff included the
same information which forms the basis of the instant motion. Although the Court did not issue
written reasons for its grant of relief, the same result obtains in the instant suit, as well as those in
which the complaints were previously sealed.
supra, at 520–21 (publicly available information is not subject to seal) (internal citations
omitted).
Contrary to Woodside’s arguments, no formulas, calculations, or proprietary
arguments are included in its unredacted Complaint. Instead, the majority of the
information sought to be redacted and sealed is email communication between DOI
employees presented as evidence in support of Woodside’s contention that the DOI’s denials
of its various applications were the result of agency bias. (Rec. Doc. 1 at ¶¶ 62–63). It
appears from the nature of these communications that the true basis of Woodside’s motion
is not the protection of trade secrets, but the protection of the identity of an informant, from
whom the emails were obtained.3 This Court finds that the protection of a confidential
informant is a permissible basis for the sealing of judicial records under Fifth Circuit
jurisprudence, as cited above.
This Court questions the necessity of including this information in Plaintiff’s
Complaint. It does not appear that the specific content of the emails or the precise identity
of the parties among whom they were transmitted furthers the sufficiency of the Complaint
under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a), which requires, inter alia, only “a short and plain statement of
the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief[.]” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).
Nevertheless, Woodside’s chosen manner of pleading leaves this Court with few
reasonable solutions. Were this Court to order Woodside to file an amended complaint
omitting the information upon which its instant motion to seal is based, it would still be
forced to seal Woodside’s original unredacted complaint in response to Woodside’s
3 This Court has no information from which to determine whether Woodside’s motion to seal is
based on preservation of the anonymity of the confidential source(s) who provided access to the
emails at issue or is merely an attempt to preserve counsel’s competitive advantage. Since neither
motive is mutually exclusive of the other, no such finding is required at this time.
permissible goal of protecting the identity of its source, as that pleading is already filed in
the record of the case. Accordingly, it is hereby
ORDERED that Woodside’s MOTION TO SEAL COMPLAINT (Ree. Doc. 2) is GRANTED
in part, such that its unredacted Complaint (Rec. Doc. 2-3) is to be SEALED from public
access based on this Court’s finding that, while it does not contain trade secrets, it does
contain information which would compromise the identity of Woodside’s source of
information.
SO ORDERED this 2nd day of October, 2024, at Lafayette, Louisiana.
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE