Alaska political leaders aspiration to view Trump undo restrictions on oil drilling

JUNEAU, Alaska — President-elect Donald Trump promised repeatedly during his campaign to expand oil drilling in the U.S., which is excellent information for political leaders in Alaska, where oil is the economic lifeblood and many felt the Biden administration has obstructed efforts to boost the state’s diminished production.

A debate over drilling on federal lands on Alaska’s petroleum-wealthy North Slope will likely be revived in the coming months, particularly in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which environmentalists have long sought to protect as one of the country’s last wild places.

On Saturday, Trump named Chris Wright — a campaign donor, fossil fuel executive and vocal advocate of oil and gas advancement — to serve as vigor secretary in his second administration.

The question of drilling on the refuge’s coastal plain, as Trump sought to do during his first term, also divides Alaska Native communities. Some welcome the potential recent returns while others worry about how it will impact wildlife in an area they consider sacred.

The largest wildlife refuge in the country covers an area of northeast Alaska roughly the size of South Carolina. It boasts a diverse landscape of mountains and glaciers, tundra plains, rivers and boreal forest, and is home to a variety of wildlife including polar bears, caribou, musk ox and birds.

The fight over whether to drill in the refuge’s coastal plain along the Beaufort Sea goes back decades. Drilling advocates declare advancement could make thousands of jobs, generate billions of dollars in returns, and spur U.S. oil production.

While the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has said the coastal plain could contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, there is limited information about the amount and standard of oil. And it’s ambiguous whether companies will desire to uncertainty pursuing projects that could become mired in litigation. Environmentalists and climate scientists have pushed for a phase-out of fossil fuels to avert the worst consequences of climate transformation.

The refuge is east of the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay and the National Petroleum safety net-Alaska, where the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow oil assignment but also made about half the petroleum safety net off-limits to oil and gas leasing.

An discovery well was drilled in the 1980s on lands where Alaska Native corporations held rights, but little information has been released about the results.

Still, opening the coastal plain to drilling has been a longtime objective for members of Alaska’s congressional delegation. In 2017, they added language to a responsibility invoice mandating two oil and gas contract sales by late 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 review the leasing program.

That led to the cancelation of seven leases that had been acquired by the Alaska Industrial advancement and Export Authority, a state corporation. Smaller companies gave up two other leases. Litigation is pending over the canceled leases.

The Biden administration recently released a recent environmental review, ahead of the deadline for the second required sale. It proposes offering what the Bureau of Land Management said would be the minimum acreage the 2017 law allows — a proposal Alaska’s Republican U.S. senators cast as a mockery of the law meant to inspire discovery.

There are sharp divisions.

Leaders of the Iñupiaq throng of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, back drilling. Gwich’in officials in communities near the refuge have said they consider the coastal plain sacred. Caribou they depend on calve there.

Galen Gilbert, first chief of Arctic Village Council, said the refuge should be off-limits to drilling. Arctic Village is a Neets’aii Gwich’in throng.

“We don’t desire to bother anybody. We don’t desire anything. We just desire our way of life, not only for us, but for our upcoming generations,” Gilbert said.

Leaders in Kaktovik have vowed to fight any attempt by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate the lands as sacred. Josiah Patkotak, mayor of the North Slope Borough, which includes Kaktovik, said in an October view piece that the land “has never been” Gwich’in territory.

“The federal government must comprehend that any attempt to undermine our sovereignty will be met with fierce resistance,” he wrote.

Oil is vital to the economic wellbeing of North Slope communities, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a nonprofit advocacy throng whose members include leaders from that region. Responsible advancement has long coexisted with subsistence lifestyles, he said.

In a video posted on X by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Trump said he would work to ensure a natural gas pipeline assignment long sought by state political leaders is built. The assignment, opposed by environmentalists, has floundered over the years due to changes in path under various governors, expense concerns and other factors.

While voters “might not have been head over heels” for Trump, “they appreciated that his policies, when they arrive to resource advancement, are clearly policies that work to advantage an economy like Alaska’s,” Trump critic U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters.

“So I would anticipate that we would view, again, a yield to greater economic opportunities through resource advancement,” she said.

Dunleavy said Trump could undo restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on recent oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of the petroleum safety net. Harcharek’s throng sued over the restrictions, arguing that the region’s elected leaders had been ignored.

Erik Grafe, an attorney for Earthjustice in Alaska, said the petroleum safety net was not set aside “to get oil out at all costs.” Other significant resources must be considered and afforded protections under the law, he said.

“Oil is not the upcoming and it can’t be,” Grafe said. “The state needs to commence thinking of a schedule B, post-oil.”