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The Biden Administration plans to offer the minimal possible acreage in a Congress-mandated oil and gas lease sale in the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said late on Wednesday.
The BLM is required in the 2017 Tax Act by Congress to hold two lease sales in the Coastal Plain within seven years of enactment.
The bureau has now released the final Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), which analyzed a lease sale mandated by Congress for the nearly 1.6-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Biden Administration’s preferred alternative is that the BLM would offer 400,000 acres—the minimum required by the Tax Act—in the northwest portion of the Coastal Plain.
“The area identified avoids important habitat for polar bear denning areas as well as Porcupine Caribou Herd calving areas,” the BLM said.
“This alternative would have the smallest footprint of potential surface disturbance, including through No Surface Occupancy stipulations, and limits seismic exploration to the areas available for leasing.”
This would be the second lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge under the 2017 Tax Act. The first was held by the Trump Administration, with nine leases issued, but the Biden Administration canceled these leases after finding “multiple legal deficiencies.”
The news of a second lease sale being prepared came hours after former President Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, beating incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris.
The second mandated lease sale didn’t please anyone. Environmentalists deplored the possibility of more oil drilling. On the other hand, supporters of drilling and Alaska officials and Republican Senators said that with the minimal possible acreage and other conditions, the Biden Administration has “all but kneecapped the whole thing,” U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told Anchorage Daily News.
