The Interior Department could offer roughly 400,000 acres of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska to oil and gas developers in a forthcoming sale, according to a final environmental assessment published by the department Wednesday.
The release of the long-awaited analysis sets up an oil and gas lease auction in the refuge in the coming months. Interior has not yet announced that sale date.
The Bureau of Land Management said in a statement Wednesday that it consulted with Alaska Native tribes and corporations to create a preferred alternative for the oil sale located in an area that avoids caribou calving grounds and polar bear dens. That area includes roughly 400,000 acres in the northwest of the refuge.
That alternative would also limit seismic testing to the lease areas and include restrictions on placement of oil and gas infrastructure.
It’s not clear the Biden administration will meet a congressional deadline of Dec. 22 for the auction, which was mandated in 2017 as part of the Republican-led Congress’s tax overhaul during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office.
The release comes on the heels of Trump winning the presidential election Tuesday over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has often claimed creating an oil program in the Arctic refuge as one of his chief accomplishments in office and suggested that if he was in the White House, the refuge would be producing oil.
ANWR has long been a potential oil supply in northern Alaska thought to help replace its famous Prudhoe Bay oil field on state lands, which has been declining in production for decades. Alaska residents reap direct revenue payments from in-state oil and gas production, and many are supportive of oil development in the refuge.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) penned the 2017 rider that created the refuge oil and gas program. The rider mandated two sales by 2025. The first auction, held in 2021 as one of the Trump administration’s final acts in office, was a commercial disappointment that only brought in three final bidders.
After taking office in late January of that year, the Biden administration swiftly froze oil and gas activity on the sold leases. It later revoked them. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland also initiated a supplemental environmental review to address “deficiencies” she said were in the Trump-era analyses.
That final supplemental review was released Wednesday. It describes an oil- and gas-leasing program with higher restrictions on drillers than the Trump-era documents.
Those restrictions may satisfy some environmental advocates who want future oil drilling hobbled in the far north to protect biodiversity, endangered polar bears and caribou.
Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Natives have long opposed development in the vast protected wilderness that has sometimes been characterized as “America’s Serengeti.”
Interior still faces several steps before it can hold a sale in the refuge.
The environmental analysis faces a 30-day review period before Interior can issue a record of decision. A final notice of sale also must be published at least 30 days before the sale date. During the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management published a final notice of sale on Dec. 7, 2020, and held the lease auction on Jan. 6, 2021.
