(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration is opening the entire coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing, reversing a Biden administration decision that put the pristine wilderness area off limits.
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday the agency was opening the 1.56 million acre of tundra on the state’s North Slope and holding a lease sale this winter in the nearby National Petroleum Reserve. It’s the latest move President Donald Trump’s administration to boost domestic fossil fuel production.
“This land should and will be supporting responsible oil and gas leasing,” Burgum said during an event at the Interior Department’s headquarters in Washington Thursday.
The refuge’s coastal plain is estimated to hold billions of barrels of crude. But many oil companies have been reluctant to target the area, given the high costs. Environmentalists and native Alaskans argue oil development in the region risks imperiling arctic foxes, polar bears and caribou.
“Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is reckless,” Bobby McEnaney, a director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “The market has said no — banks and insurers won’t back it, lease sales flopped, and taxpayers are left holding the bag. Public lands must serve people, wildlife, and a livable climate—not host a fire sale for fossil fuel companies.”
Read: Biden to Cancel Arctic Oil Drilling Rights Sold by Trump
During Trump’s first term, Congress lifted a 40-year-old ban on energy development in the refuge in 2017, mandating lease sales.
President Joe Biden canceled leases sold in 2021 and barred exploration in more than half of the nearby National Petroleum Reserve.
Not a single company opted to bid in two additional lease sales in the region mandated by Congress and held just days before President Joe Biden left office. Oil industry representatives and Alaska officials, however, complained the lease sale’s structure discouraged bidding from the start.
The Interior Department also said Thursday it had brokered a land-exchange deal that would allow construction of a contentious road through southwestern Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
(Adds details about planned lease sale in second paragraph, road construction in last paragraph.)
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