By Ryan Patrick Jones
(Reuters) – The U.S. state of Alaska has sued the Biden administration over what it calls violations of a congressional directive to allow oil and gas development in part of the federal Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Monday’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Alaska challenges the federal government’s December 2024 decision to restrict oil and gas drilling in an area known as the Coastal Plain.
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The lawsuit says restrictions on land use and occupancy “make it impossible or impracticable” to develop 400,000 acres of land that the U.S. Department of the Interior plans to auction to oil and gas drillers this month.
The restrictions would severely limit future oil exploration and drilling in the refuge, it added.
“Interior’s continued and irrational opposition under the Biden administration to responsible energy development in the Arctic is putting America on a path of energy dependency rather than taking advantage of the vast resources at our disposal,” the Republican governor said Mike Dunleavy said in a statement.
Alaska wants the court to set aside the December decision and ban the department from issuing leases at auction.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management declined to comment.
Combined with the Department’s cancellation of leases granted during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, Alaska says it will receive only a fraction of the $1.1 billion that the Congressional Budget Office estimated in direct rent-related revenue from energy development in the area. .
The lawsuit is Alaska’s latest legal response to the Biden administration’s efforts to protect 8 million acres of ANWR for species such as polar bears and caribou.
An October 2023 lawsuit by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority challenged the government’s decision to cancel the seven leases it had. Another state lawsuit in July 2024 sought to recover revenue lost as a result.
Drilling in the ANWR, the largest national wildlife refuge, was off-limits for decades and the subject of fierce political battles between environmentalists and Alaska’s political leaders, who have long supported development in the coastal plain.
In 2017, Alaska lawmakers secured that opportunity with a provision in a Trump-backed tax cut passed by Congress. In the final days of the Trump administration, the country issued nine ten-year leases for drilling in the ANWR.
Under Biden, two rent winners withdrew from their properties in 2022. In September, the Interior Department canceled the seven issued to the state industrial development agency.
(Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Heather Timmons and Clarence Fernandez)