Another lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is set for next month after the Department of Interior’s Record of Decision Monday for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program Supplemental Environment Impact Statement.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Another lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is set for next month after the Department of Interior’s Record of Decision Monday for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program Supplemental Environment Impact Statement .
The sale includes 400,000 acres, the minimum acreage required by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that opened the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas leasing. The Bureau of Land Management says it creates the smallest footprint of potential surface disturbance and limits seismic exploration. On December 8, 2024, the Department of the Interior signed a new Record of Decision, adopting Alternative D2 to guide management of the Coastal Plain of ANWR. This alternative makes the minimum 400,000 acres available for the January 9, 2025, lease sale.The Interior approved nine leases in a 2019 sale; but an executive order by the then newly-elected President Joe Biden to review the program marked the first in a series of moves that kept further action from taking place. The previous sale held in the last days of President Trump’s first administration failed to attract much attention from major oil companies, with the few leases issued being later canceled by President Biden.One of those canceled leases belonged to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned corporation which continues toBiden’s administration has imposed greater protections with the second upcoming sale, a decision favored by conservation groups such as The Wilderness Society, which have long since raised concerns that developing the land would cause significant disruptions to Porcupine Caribou herds in the area. “There’s a dependence, a deep intertwined relationship with the Porcupine Caribou herd with the Gwich’in people who live on the other side of the Brooks Range,” Wilderness Society Alaska Senior Manager Meda DeWitt said. “But their traditional protocols and their culture is around Porcupine Caribou and supporting them and being good relatives and ensuring that their habitat is intact and that they’re well cared for.” AIDEA’s Executive Director Randy Ruaro has maintained there are ways of developing the leases responsibly. “When you take the the small footprint of impacts, the advanced drilling and development techniques that have occurred since 1980 when the 1002 was created, and then the decades of experience we have with caribou and the Dalton Highway and the oil development across the North Slope not hurting those caribou, we think that the impacts are either largely overstated or can be reasonably mitigated,” Ruaro said. According to DeWitt, with 17 international insurance companies declining to insure drilling, along with major banks in both the U.S. and Canada declining funding, those facts alone make it a bad investment. “If you look at that as a standing system that we have to deal with, if you’re not going to get adequate financing and if you’re not going to be insured, then it is not smart, it’s not financially feasible to do that work,” DeWitt said. Ruaro disagrees. He said that based on expert analysis, he has every reason to believe that drilling in ANWR would be extremely profitable for Alaska. “Our experts tell us that there are billions of barrels — as the federal government says we agree with them — there are billions of barrels of recoverable oil in AMWR, and the estimated annual revenue to the state of Alaska from that oil is roughly $2 billion a year.” Senators Lisa Murkowski and Sullivan released a joint statement on Tuesday morning condemning the decision, saying the Department of the Interior is attempting to ensure the sale fails. “For the past four years, Interior has done everything it can think of to undermine responsible development on the Coastal Plain, ignoring federal law and those who actually live on the North Slope to upend the reasonable program the Trump administration put in place in 2020,” Murkowski said. “The ROD does not reflect statutory requirements, the preferences of most local residents, or the needs of our nation, but it’s a fitting finale for an administration that has routinely allowed Iran, Venezuela, and other adversaries to produce their resources, regardless of the consequences, while attempting to shut everything down in Alaska.” “The Biden-Harris administration’s eleventh-hour lease sale in ANWR is yet another charade aimed at subverting the will of Congress in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” Sen. Sullivan said. “The Biden Interior Department is proposing a lease sale that closes three-quarters of the 1002 Area—including lands that are projected to have substantial resources beneath them—after having previously cancelled all of the leases lawfully-issued under the first statutorily mandated lease sale. But the most insulting aspect of BLM’s announcement is the agency’s claim to have ‘consulted with Alaska Native Tribes and Corporations’ on this Record of Decision. “Having spoken with the leaders of these entities, I can report that nothing is further from the truth. The Biden-Harris administration has never given any weight to the voices of the Alaska Native people in the region who strongly support responsible resource development in ANWR for the benefit of their communities—just like the Biden-Harris administration refused to even meet with Alaska Native leaders when promulgating their illegal NPR-A rule. Cancelling Alaska Native voices continues under the Biden-Harris administration, but don’t hold your breath for the mainstream media to write that story. The good news is we will soon be working with the Trump administration that, unlike Biden-Harris, has a proven track record of responsible oil and gas production and Alaska resource development, and respects the voices of the Iñupiat people of the North Slope.”The Interior Department wrote in a press release that the Record of Decision “best balances the five purposes of the Refuge by presenting a pathway to provide maximum protection for the conservation purposes of the Refuge while meeting the requirement under the Tax Act.”16-year-old boy dies after falling through thin ice on lake2 dead, 7 injured in head-on crash outside FairbanksKiwanis Club of Fairbanks Christmas tree prices stable despite inflation
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