Two weeks before Trump left office in 2021, the Interior Department auctioned off the first of these leases to oil companies and an Alaska state agency. But the Biden administration suspended and then canceled those leases, saying Interior had done an “insufficient analysis” of drilling’s impact in the environmentally sensitive region.
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Now, the Biden administration is seeking to narrow the second lease sale without violating the 2017 law that requires it.
In a final environmental impact statement released Wednesday, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management outlined several options for the second sale. The “preferred alternative” calls for offering 400,000 acres — the minimum required by the 2017 law — in the northwest portion of the refuge’s coastal plain.
In addition, it calls for avoiding critical habitat for polar bears and calving grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd, and minimizing harm to the subsistence activities of Alaska Native communities.
Trump has offered a starkly different vision for the refuge.
At a fundraiser in Houston in May, Trump promised oil executives that he would significantly boost drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if he returned to the White House, The Washington Post previously reported.
“I had ANWR approved in Alaska. It’s the biggest oil farm,” Trump said, incorrectly stating the refuge holds an oil reserve “equivalent of Saudi Arabia, they think.” The US Geological Survey has estimated somewhere between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels of oil lie underneath the refuge’s coastal plain, whereas Saudi Arabia has an estimated 267 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves.
Trump frequently mentioned the refuge’s oil reserves during campaign rallies, as well as during an August conversation on the social media platform X with owner Elon Musk.
“I’ll get it going very quickly,” Trump told Musk of the refuge. “Because not only is it big for Alaska. I mean, you talk about economic development. That for the United States, I mean, that is, they say, bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size, and pure, really good stuff.”
Yet weak industry interest plagued the lease sale in the refuge just before Trump left office. Low oil prices, coupled with the prospect of public backlash, meant that no major oil companies bid on the leases. The sale of 11 tracts on more than 550,000 acres netted just $14.4 million, a tiny fraction of what Republicans had predicted it would yield.
A state agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), put up most of the winning bids covering 370,000 acres. Regenerate Alaska, a division of an Australian firm, voluntarily canceled its lease in 2022 after Chevron and Hilcorp, two other oil companies, had also jettisoned their claims.
AIDEA is already positioning itself to participate in the upcoming lease sale in the refuge. In October, its board voted unanimously to spend up to $20 million to prepare and potentially submit bids in the auction. But board chair J. Dana Pruhs said before the vote that he expects to deliberate over the possible bids during a December meeting “before actually pulling the triggers.”
Though the refuge is remote — roughly 2,000 people visit it each year, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service — it has become a flash point in the national debate over how to treat public lands. Many Alaskans, Republicans, and oil industry executives have fought to allow drilling in the refuge, saying taxes on oil production help fund cash-strapped local governments in this remote region.
But environmental and Indigenous activists have successfully pressured major banks in the United States and Canada to stop financing oil projects in the refuge. That includes five of the biggest US banks — Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. (While Bank of America pledged not to finance new coal mines or Arctic drilling projects in 2022, it abandoned those commitments in February.)
On Wednesday, many environmental and Indigenous advocates applauded the Biden administration for narrowing the upcoming lease sale in the refuge. Some also urged lawmakers to repeal the provision in the 2017 law that mandated the sale — an unlikely scenario with Republicans set to take control of the Senate in January.
“Industrializing the coastal plain would bring irreparable harm to caribou, polar bears, and other wildlife, and threaten the cultural and spiritual existence of the Gwich’in people,” Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska senior program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “We again call upon Congress to repeal this reckless mandate and restore protections to the refuge.”
Like any community, Alaska Native tribes are not monoliths, and the North Slope Inupiat support drilling in the refuge because of its economic benefits. Doreen Leavitt, tribal secretary and director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, slammed the administration’s decision Wednesday.
“This development is a desperate Hail-Mary from a soundly defeated Biden administration that is more intent on advancing its policy agenda and ramming through flawed policies than working with Alaska Native communities to create balanced, lasting policies that advance our self-determination,” Leavitt said in a statement.
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Publish date : 2024-11-05 11:00:00
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