JUNIAU, Alaska (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly pledged during his campaign to expand U.S. oil drilling, which is good news for political leaders in Alaska, where oil is the economic lifeline and many felt the government -Biden has hampered efforts to boost the state’s diminished output.
A debate over drilling on federal lands on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope is likely to be revived in coming months, especially in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which environmentalists have long sought to protect as one of the country’s last wild places .
The issue of drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain, as Trump tried to do during his first term, also divides Alaska Native communities. Some welcome the potential new revenue, while others worry about the impact on wildlife in an area they consider sacred.
What is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
The nation’s largest wildlife refuge covers an area in northeastern Alaska about the size of South Carolina. It features a diverse landscape of mountains and glaciers, tundra plains, rivers and boreal forests, and is home to a variety of wildlife including polar bears, caribou, musk oxen and birds.
The battle over whether to drill in the coastal plain of the Beaufort Sea refuge goes back decades. Drilling advocates say the development could create thousands of jobs, generate billions of dollars in revenue and boost U.S. oil production.
Although the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has said the coastal plain could hold 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, there is limited information on the quantity and quality of the oil. And it’s unclear whether companies want to take the risk of pursuing projects that could become embroiled in lawsuits. Environmentalists and climate scientists have urged a phase-out of fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.
The refuge is east of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow oil project but also made about half of the petroleum reserve off-limits to oil and gas leasing.
Have any attempts been made to drill into the shelter?
In the 1980s, an exploratory well was drilled on lands where Alaska Native companies owned rights, but little information has been released about the results.
Still, opening the coastal plain to drilling has long been a goal for members of Alaska’s congressional delegation. In 2017, they added language to a tax bill that mandated two oil and gas lease sales by the end of 2024.
The first sale took place in the waning days of the last Trump administration, but President Joe Biden quickly called on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to overhaul the leasing program.
That led to the cancellation of seven leases acquired by the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. Smaller companies gave up two other leases. There is a lawsuit going on about the canceled leases.
The Biden administration recently released a new environmental assessment ahead of the deadline for the second required sale. It proposes to offer what the Bureau of Land Management said would be the minimum acreage that the 2017 law would allow — a proposal that Alaska’s Republican U.S. senators introduced as a mockery of the law intended to encourage exploration encourage.
What do Alaskans want?
There are sharp divisions.
Leaders of the Iñupiaq community of Kaktovik, which is located in the refuge, support the drilling. Gwich’in officials in communities near the refuge have said they consider the coastal plain sacred. Caribou they depend on calves there.
Galen Gilbert, first head of the Arctic Village Council, said drilling would not be allowed in the refuge. Arctic Village is a Neets’aii Gwich’in community.
“We don’t want to bother anyone. We don’t want anything. We just want our way of life, not only for ourselves, but for our future generations,” Gilbert said.
Leaders in Kaktovik have vowed to fight any attempt by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to label the land as sacred. Josiah Patkotak, mayor of the North Slope Borough, which includes Kaktovik, said in an October op-ed that the land has “never” been Gwich’in territory.
“The federal government must understand that any attempt to undermine our sovereignty will be met with fierce resistance,” he wrote.
Oil is vital to the economic well-being of North Slope communities, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a nonprofit whose members include leaders from that region. Responsible development has long coexisted with a self-sufficient lifestyle, he said.
What could change after Trump’s election?
In a video posted to X by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Trump said he would work to build a natural gas pipeline project long sought by the state’s political leaders. The project, opposed by environmentalists, has failed over the years due to changes in direction under various governors, cost considerations and other factors.
While voters “may not have been head over heels” for Trump, “they appreciated that his policies, when it comes to resource development, are clearly policies that benefit an economy like Alaska,” Trump critic told, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, to reporters. .
“So I expect that we will once again see a return to greater economic opportunity through resource development,” she said.
Dunleavy said Trump could reverse restrictions the Biden administration placed on leasing new oil and gas on 13 million acres of the petroleum reserve. Harcharek’s group denounced the restrictions, arguing that the region’s elected leaders had been ignored.
Erik Grafe, an attorney for Earthjustice in Alaska, said the oil reserve was not set aside “to get oil out at all costs.” Other important resources must be taken into account and protected under the law, he said.
“Oil is not the future and it cannot be,” Grafe said. “The state must start thinking about a Plan B, after oil.”
