Story at a glance
- The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday announced it would auction drilling rights in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 6.
- The Trump administration is moving to sell the leases in the region before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office.
- Conservationists and Democrats argue drilling in the refuge would harm the natural environment and indigenous people who live in the region.
The Trump administration is moving forward with auctioning off controversial drilling rights in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) shortly before President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Thursday announced it would issue a sale notice for oil and gas leases on Dec. 7, putting the administration on track to hold a drilling auction via video livestream over large swaths of the pristine wilderness on Jan. 6.
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A provision in the 2017 Trump tax bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress opened ANWR to drilling after decades of debate over the matter.
Following environmental reviews in August, the Trump administration launched the formal process in mid-November to sell off leases in the refuge.
Now the administration is moving to sell oil drilling leases in the region before Biden, who is opposed to drilling in the refuge, is sworn into office on Jan. 20.
“Congress directed us to hold lease sales in the ANWR Coastal Plain, and we have taken a significant step in announcing the first sale in advance of the December 2021 deadline set by law,” Chad Padgett, the Alaska state director for the Bureau of Land Management, said.
Padgett said the oil and gas from ANWR is an important resource for meeting the country’s long-term energy demands and would create economic opportunities.
Opening the refuge to drilling is an important piece of President Trump’s push to expand domestic fossil fuel production, but it has faced fierce opposition from conservationists and Democrats who argue it would harm the natural environment and indigenous people who live in the region.
Several native groups and Democratic-led states have filed lawsuits aimed at stopping the drilling.
“This is a shameful attempt by Donald Trump to give one last handout to the fossil fuel industry on his way out the door, at the expense of our public lands and our climate,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said.
“The Trump administration’s rushed and sloppy push to sell off the Arctic Refuge for drilling has been a disaster from day one, and has ignored the serious and permanent damage drilling would do to this unique ecosystem and the communities that depend on it,” Brune said.
Meanwhile, several major U.S. banks have ruled out financing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Chase, Wells Fargo and CitiBank all made commitments not to do so earlier this year.
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