A sweeping executive order signed by President Donald Trump during the first hours of his second term aims to boost Alaska’s natural resource industry by reversing environmental protections that limit oil and gas extraction, logging, and other development projects across the state.
The order was one of dozens signed by Trump following his inauguration Monday. Another order signed earlier in the day reversed executive actions taken by former President Joe Biden during his presidency, removing restrictions on oil development in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea.
Trump’s broad order, titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” follows a request from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for swift action reforming the federal government offices and policies that oversee Alaska’s resource development industry. The policy changes were also championed by Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation.
[More coverage of the first day of Trump’s presidency]
Trump’s order aims to reshape federal policy so that the country “fully avail(s) itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources.” The order proceeds to lay out various provisions which aim to smooth the path toward more drilling for oil and gas; more logging; more mining; and more hunting on federal lands.
[As he takes office, Trump says he’s changing the name of Denali back to Mount McKinley]
The order instructs agency heads across the federal government to revoke, rescind or revise regulations that are inconsistent with resource development in Alaska, including most of those issued by Biden when he was in office. In effect, many of the provisions in the order take federal policies back to where they were in January 2021, when Trump was last in office.
• The order revokes Biden’s actions that halted oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Trump had led a move to allow oil and gas exploration in the refuge during his first term, only for it to be reversed by Biden.
• Trump also ordered the denial of a request that had been considered by the Biden administration to establish a sacred Indigenous site in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• The order rescinds Biden’s rejection of a right-of-way permit to build a contentious 200-mile road through wilderness to the Ambler mining district in Northwest Alaska.
• The order seeks to again repeal the ‘Roadless Rule’ that is meant to limit logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. That’s an action that Trump took during his first term, which Biden then reversed.
• Trump reinstated his 2020 rule to increase hunting and trapping on federal preserves in Alaska. Conservation groups said the rule supported the killing of predators and their young but state leaders, hunters and a tribal consortium praised the Trump administration’s actions five years ago.
• Trump reinstated an order he issued during his first term to allow oil and gas development on 28 million acres of federal Alaska lands. The lands were protected from such development in the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The Biden administration had restored those protections last year.
• Trump ordered “expedited development” of a road connecting the community of King Cove to the airport in Cold Bay, through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Trump had in 2019 approved a land swap for the road to be built, but the Biden administration had revoked the approval, citing legal flaws in the agreement. The Biden administration approved a new land swap late last year.
• Trump signaled he would support Dunleavy’s years-long effort to assert Alaska’s control over the state’s navigable waterways, including those that go through federal lands.
• The order also seeks to prioritize “the development of Alaska’s liquified natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations with the Pacific region.” It’s an idea that Dunleavy once scoffed at, but has recently embraced as a New York-based company agreed to pursue development of the project.
The order was broadly embraced by Alaska’s political leaders.
Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a statement that Alaska under Biden “suffered under an unrelenting assault” and that Trump’s order and promised policies “will put Alaskans back in the driver’s seat of our state’s destiny” by advancing resource development projects.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski — who has often criticized Trump even as she aligned with him on energy policies — celebrated the action.
“President Trump is picking up right where he left off, reversing years of damaging decisions and prioritizing Alaska’s unrivaled opportunities for responsible energy and mineral development,” Murkowski said in a statement.
Dunleavy and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, the newest member of Alaska’s congressional delegation, both welcomed Trump’s executive order.
“Alaska is unleashed!” Dunleavy said on social media. “On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order recognizing Alaska as a true energy warehouse, paving the way for unprecedented opportunities in resource development and energy independence.”
Alaska is unleashed! On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order recognizing Alaska as a true energy warehouse, paving the way for unprecedented opportunities in resource development and energy independence. Read the Executive Order:…
— Governor Mike Dunleavy (@GovDunleavy) January 21, 2025
In a video filmed inside the Capitol, where Trump’s inauguration ceremony took place, Begich said before the executive order was signed that he was “excited to take these next steps to open Alaska for the benefit of Alaskans and for our entire nation.”
It remains unclear how quickly — if at all — the executive actions will lead to new resource projects in Alaska. Past attempts to open some parts of Alaska to new resource extraction projects yielded limited interest from private investors, though critics blamed that on strict regulations that could be altered under Trump.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said in his second inaugural address. One of his executive orders signed Monday established a “national energy emergency.”
Among the actions rescinded by Trump was a 2023 plan issued by Biden limiting drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Biden announced that plan in conjunction with approving the Willow oil development project. Trump also rescinded a Biden action from earlier this month that withdrew vast swaths of the coastal U.S. from future oil and gas drilling, including in and near Alaska’s Bering Sea.
Biden cited environmental and economic risks when taking the previous executive actions, which drew ire from Alaska’s Republican political leaders, while receiving some support from Alaska Native groups and conservation organizations.
Monday’s executive actions were met with defiance from conservation advocates, who said that opening federal lands to development would exacerbate climate change and damage Alaska’s ecosystems.
“We aren’t afraid to take on Trump and his bravado and we’ll be fighting to keep Alaska great every step of the way,” Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a prepared statement.
Trump on Monday also signed an executive order to change the name of Denali to Mount McKinley.
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Publish date : 2025-01-20 16:52:00
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