Alaska state leaders say the Bureau of Land Management earlier this year abruptly broke a commitment to consider lifting land-use restrictions along a highway important to the state’s oil industry, sparking their latest rift with the federal agency over public land management policies.
The issue involves a public land order covering more than 2 million acres along a significant stretch of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and a highway used by the oil industry. The state wants those lands, which are critical to the future of its oil economy, turned over to Alaska as part of its ongoing efforts to gain title to millions of acres of land currently under federal ownership.
Until this spring, BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning had assured representatives with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources that her agency was poised to launch an environmental review to potentially lift the land order, which would then open the possibility of transferring some land to the state, officials said.
And then BLM slammed on the brakes.
