The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will cancel all oil and natural gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were sold during the Trump administration, a move that federal officials said is to protect the region’s array of wildlife, combat climate change and honor Indigenous residents.
Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland authorized the cancellations of seven leases held by Alaska’s state-owned economic development agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, in the remote coastal region that sprawls more than 19 million acres bordering Canada to the east and the Beaufort Sea to the north.
“From day one, I have delivered on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in our country’s history,” President Biden said in a statement. “But there is more to do, and my administration will continue to take bold action to meet the urgency of the climate crisis and to protect our lands and waters for generations to come.”
Ms. Haaland said a draft environmental impact statement by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the Trump administration’s lease sales were “seriously flawed” and were based on “fundamental legal deficiencies,” including insufficient analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and the absence of an analysis on greenhouse gas emissions.
A 2017 Republican tax law under former President Donald Trump required leases for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing decades of protections for the oil-rich region.
A federal judge last month rejected the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority’s lawsuit against a Biden executive order halting the leases, ruling that the administration‘s decision to seek further environmental analysis was legal. Two other leases were previously canceled and refunded in the same region at the request of the leaseholders prior to the remaining seven held by the state agency being canceled as part of Wednesday’s new protections.
The Interior Department on Wednesday also unveiled a new regulatory rule to prevent new drilling across 13 million acres of Alaska’s 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve situated west of the wildlife refuge that was originally designated 100 years ago as an emergency U.S. Navy oil supply because of its vast underground resources.
The proposed rule and lease cancellations, combined with past protections under Mr. Biden, will mean no new oil and gas leases will be permitted anywhere in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean.
“With today’s action, no one will have rights to drill for oil in one of the most sensitive landscapes on Earth,” Ms. Haaland told reporters. “Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime, and we cannot ignore the disproportionate impacts being felt in the Arctic.”
The lease cancellations appeased climate activists who say Mr. Biden has done too little to curtail new fossil fuel drilling on federal lands and in waters. But they also played into criticism from Republicans and the energy sector that his environmental agenda is inflating costs by stifling domestic production.
“I’m gonna sound like Ronald Reagan: there they go again,” West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told newstodayalert. “It’s just a repeating theme of it: saying they want energy independence and knocking down any possibilities that will actually happen — and costing a lot of jobs.”
Senate Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, blasted Mr. Biden for what he called “caving to the radical left with no regard for clear direction from Congress or American energy security.”
“I can’t explain to the American people why we would willingly become more dependent on foreign oil imports, eliminate good paying American jobs and drive up the cost of our electric bills and gas prices across the country,” Mr. Manchin said. “Let’s be clear — this is another attempt to use executive action to circumvent a law to accomplish what this administration does not have the votes to achieve in Congress. Canceling valid leases, removing acreage from future sales, and attempting to reduce production in Alaska while taking steps to allow Iran and Venezuela to produce more oil — with fewer environmental regulations — makes no sense and is frankly embarrassing.”
The administration is required to have another oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by 2024 under the Trump-era tax law. A senior administration official signaled they will conduct the sale, despite the latest lease cancellations and environmental protections.
“We intend to comply with the law,” the official told reporters. They declined to elaborate.
Daniel Turner, executive director of the nonprofit fossil fuel advocacy group Power the Future, called the administration‘s actions “another nail in the coffin of the White House lie that Joe Biden isn’t standing in the way of American energy production.”
“As families are dealing with rising gas prices, President Biden is working to ensure his radical green agenda comes first,” Mr. Turner said in a statement.
The announcements came just months after the administration infuriated environmentalists by greenlighting Alaska’s Willow oil project, a decades-long venture by ConocoPhillips in the National Petroleum Reserve.
The new protections, which will not impact the Willow project, were lauded by climate groups.
“We applaud President Biden and Secretary Haaland for these significant steps to protect Arctic communities and our climate,” said League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld. “These proposed protections are vitally important for this unique and sacred landscape.”
Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation group, was pleased but said more must be done to combat climate change by blocking all new offshore oil and gas leasing in all federal waters.
