The Trump administration announced Monday that it would soon begin issuing oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A decade after President Obama was urged by Democrats in the U.S. Senate to permanently provide the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with "the strongest possible protections," a move that the president didn't take due to looming opposition, President Trump's administration indicated Monday that it would begin the process to open parts of the 19-million-acre refuge to oil drilling.
An announcement to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register calls for "nominations and comments on the lease tracts" on about 1.6 million acres of the refuge's coastal plain. The timing of the announcement could allow for lease sales just three days before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office.
Under the process, public comments and tract nominations for leasing would be taken through December 17, and 30 days after that the Interior Department could move to begin lease sales.
“Receiving input from industry on which tracts to make available for leasing is vital in conducting a successful lease sale,” said U.S. Bureau of Land Management Alaska State Director Chad Padgett in a release. “This call for nominations brings us one step closer to holding an historic first Coastal Plain lease sale, satisfying the directive of Congress in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and advancing this administration’s policy of energy independence.”
According to the BLM, the area "contain between 4.25 and 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil," and the entire area would be open to leasing.
Congressional Democrats and conservation groups long have sought protections that would prevent drilling in the refuge. In November 2010, when they implored President Obama to provide such protections, 25 Senate Democrats said the refuge is "truly one of America's greatest wild places. Its coastal plain hosts an amazing diversity of wildlife including polar bears, grizzly bears, muskoxen, wolverines and over a hundred thousand caribou."
"This 'biological heart' of the refuge is connected to the entire country, as well as to countries all over the world," they added. "Every year, birds that begin their lives on the coastal plain migrate to all 50 states and across six continents, before heading back to the Arctic, where the cycle of life begins again."
But Obama's hands largely were tied during the lameduck session following the 2010 election. He couldn't use The Antiquities Act to protect the refuge because after President Carter in 1978 proclaimed 15 national monuments in Alaska, Congress curtailed further presidential use of the Antiquities Act in Alaska without Congress' approval.
Plus, the president had been put on notice by Republicans, who had gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election, not to designate any national monuments without consulting both the general public and Congress.
Nearly 1.6 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge spread across 32 tracts soon could open to oil leasing/BLM
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva was among the critics of the move to issue leases in the refuge.
“This administration is ending as it began, with a desperate push for oil drilling regardless of the human or environmental costs," said the Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. "Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would destroy one of the most iconic wilderness areas on Earth for no discernible public benefit, and it’s as wrong to allow it now as it’s ever been. It’s fitting that President Trump is going out with one last try to score political points by destroying our environment, and that he’s being replaced by someone who understands the much greater stakes involved in these decisions.”
At Defenders of Wildlife, CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark also called the move misguided due to the wildlife resources that could be put at risk from drilling.
“Oil and gas drilling could wipe out polar bears on the coastal plain of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in our lifetimes. The Southern Beaufort Sea population has already been cut in half and with only 900 bears remaining, any additional losses from oil and gas development would likely compromise the future of these bears," said Clark. "Defenders will hold oil companies’ feet to the fire for any negative impacts from drilling to polar bears, other wildlife and the fragile coastal plain."
According to the Alaska Conservation Federation, the refuge is home to the state's largest caribou herd, the Porcupine herd, and migrating birds from across North America head there to breed.
"Moreover, these animals are essential to the subsistence lifestyles of the Alaska Native Tribes who have lived in this area for thousands of years," the federation says on its website.
According to the BLM, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress "was unique because it did not just allow for an oil and gas development program, it requires one that delivers energy to the nation and revenue to the treasury."
What steps a Biden administration might take to protect the refuge from drilling remains to be seen.
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Do we have to suck every last drop of oil and gas from the earth? It is not going anywhere if we leave it there. Can't we leave some for the next few generations until we get safe nuclear or fusion going, or whatever else might come along? Just maybe, we won't even need to trash these pristine wildlife areas. I doubt this proposal has anything to do with need, just corporate profits.
Brown, if there is no need, no one will buy it and there will be no profits. Enjoy your $1.50 gas while you can. It isn't likely to last long.
Why is it that ANWR and Bears Ears/Grand Staircase areas are being leased to Canadian mining companies when our president is doing his best to make America energy dominant and energy independant while creating more quality jobs for our citizens?
Okay let me see if I understand some of the comments. It's okay to look for oil in Alaska and ignore the needs of the people and animals that live there. Oil lobbyists know we are now independent from importing millions of gallons of oil each year and oil companies aren't able to charge as much for their products so, their profits are shrinking. Since we import most oil from Canada, a Canadian company will get a lease and hire Americans instead of Canadians? Call me naive, but. It looks like 1 plus 1 isn't coming to 2.
As a former Alaska resident, I understand the two groupings of individuals and opinions. One is don't spoil the unspoiled. The other is jobs!
Speaking for myself, and my opinions about the future, enough with the spoiling. In particular I personally despise the "quick, start the raping before inauguration day!".
Well, SallyG, it might be because America's experiencing a wave of dark matter. Astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists have been telling us for years that the universe is awash in dark matter and I'm sure it could be weighing on this equation. Personally, I've observed it skewing the totals my whole life and, if you take a minute to think about, I bet you have too.
Back in the mid-1950s, my father lamented how Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, manipulated the old House Un-American Activities Committee to tip the scales and make 1 plus 1 equal something other than 2 pretty much all across the country. Those were dark times with more than enough dark matter clogging the system.
There was plenty of dark matter involved when Ronald Reagan and his henchmen, including George H. W. Bush, clandestinely sold arms to Iran to raise funds to fight an unauthorized proxy war in Central America and, when that dark matter cleared enough to be seen through, it turned out there were profitmaking cocaine shipments involved. But, thanks to an abundance of dark matter, Reagan was allowed to feign a case of early onset Oldtimers' Disease and slink away with no consequences. William Barr, yes, that same William Barr, was brought in to get the rest of the co-conspirators off and make it all disappear ...into the darkness.
Dark matter reappeared and pretty much clogged Katherine Harris' Secretary of State conference room in Florida in November of 2000, when her state security team was sent home early so that Jeb Bush's diehard party security team and his party operatives could come in with ballots that had been officially deemed invalid due to errors and omissions. Enough of those ballots were "corrected" and "completed" by the party operatives and reinserted into the count to flip that election and Florida's electoral votes. The story of what happened there also seems to have been rewritten ...to facilitate it disappearing ...into the darkness.
Even more dark matter was pulled into our gravitational field when oil company executive Dick Cheney decided to invade Iraq and put a stop to their rampant development of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). America's top experts told him and his minions that Iraq no longer had any functioning WMD programs; but, oil company executive Dick Cheney overrode them and invaded anyway. After all that blood and treasure had been spent, 1 plus 1 never equaled 2 there either. They ultimately never found any functioning WMD programs; but, the funny thing is that oil company executive Dick Cheney did find oil and some really lucrative defense contracts for his old company. I just wish his old company hadn't electrocuted so many of our troops with the badly wired barracks showers they built, but that was probably just due to so much dark matter being present in the system.
We've certainly had a glut of dark matter tipping the scales over the past few years. It's been so bad that it almost seems like a hostile foreign power has been calling the shots. It's been bad for so long that I can't even remember the last time 1 plus 1 equaled 2; can you? I sure hope the folks in Georgia know which way to vote on January 5th.
Thank you for recalling so much - made my head spin! That is a compliment NOT a criticism. I've never been one to look deeply into issues and accept things I can't fix as they are presented. Over the years I've been reminded that just because I'm honest doesn't mean others are too. I agree that dark matter will always be part of our world. I too hope Georgia makes the right choices. I guess my next wish is that Covid will be under control soon so I can get back in our national parks!
Actually ANILCA didnt preclude new monuments in Alaska- President Bush designated a monument in the Aleutians in 2008. further Section 1326 of ANILCA exempts any areas set aside prior to 1980 from the 5000 acre limit (the limit also doesnt apply to marine areas). ANWR was designated in 1960 under Eisenhower, so it is exempt from the 5000 acre limit. so is Tongass and Chugach national forests(1908), The Petroluem Reserve (1924) and Bristol Bay (1974). All of those areas can be protected in their entirety, as can the 120M acres in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas Obama reserved under the 1953 Outer Contentinental Shelf Lands Act in 2016. A monument simply needs to have objects of historic and scientific importance in it, and the Supreme Court ruled in Cappaert v Us(1976), that that includes wildlife and their habitat. Protecting the nations largest forest, largest refuge and world largest salmon fishery are all no brainers. there are probably 50 areas in Alaska that could become monuments. people forget that Andrus wanted Carter to set aside 100M acres which would have resulted in 30-40 monuments. Carter set aside half the number of monuments and half the acreage