The Trump administration is preparing to allow oil and gas leasing across the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, a wilderness landscape that has been protected for more than four decades, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.
The announcement, which is expected from the Interior Department later this month but may be delayed due to the government shutdown, is the latest move by the administration to ramp up U.S. fossil fuel production and would fulfill a promise President Donald Trump made during his first term to advance drilling in the 1.56-million-acre expanse of tundra on Alaska’s North Slope. And it would be the latest in a nearly decadelong regulatory back-and-forth over the prospect of drilling in the wildlife refuge that Trump first ordered in 2017 but that was later halted by President Joe Biden.
Along with the new record of decision, Interior will also reinstate seven leases the state of Alaska acquired in the refuge just before Trump left office in 2021 and that the Biden administration then canceled.
Re-opening ANWR for drilling would almost certainly invite environmental groups and tribes opposed to the action to file legal complaints trying to stop it. It will also test oil companies’ desire to send rigs to a remote area that has long been a rallying cry for the environmental movement just as low crude prices are causing Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and others in the industry to lay off workers.
