The Interior Department on Monday approved a plan that would reopen more than 80 percent of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas leasing.
The status of the so-called Integrated Activity Plan for the reserve has ping-ponged between administrations over the last decade. Monday’s move restores a plan issued in 2020 under the first Trump administration that opened much of the 23-million-acre petroleum reserve to drilling.
As part of the process, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management published a new environmental assessment and held a 14-day comment period to evaluate any “new circumstances and information that had emerged since 2020.”
“This updated plan is a major step forward in restoring the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to the purpose Congress intended,” acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said in a statement.
