Green, Indigenous Groups Warns Arctic Still at Grave Drilling Risk When Trump Returns

"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said one advocate.


A member of the Porcupine caribou herd is seen in the Arctic Refuge in Alaska.
(Photo: G MacRae/flickr/cc)

Julia Conley
Dec 09, 2024
COMMON DREAM

Wildlife protection groups and Indigenous leaders in Alaska said Monday that they would push to discourage bidding in an oil and gas lease sale just announced by the U.S. Interior Department for part of the Arctc National Wildlife Refuge.

Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which opened the refuge for oil and gas drilling, the Biden administration announced the second of two lease sales, set to be held on January 9, 2025.

The first Trump administration held the initial lease sale in 2021, but with banks and insurance companies increasingly reticent to back drilling projects in the area, it generated little interest and led to less than 1% of the projected sale revenue.




Releasing its final record of decision, the Interior Department said Monday that 400,000 acres of wilderness in the refuge's 1.6-million-acre northwest Coastal Plain would be put up for bidding at a minimum price of $30 per acre—despite vocal opposition from the Gwich'in Nation and the Iñupiat Alaska Natives.

The land supports local communities as well as porcupine caribou herds and polar bears.

"Our way of life, our food security, and our spiritual well-being is directly tied to the health of the caribou and the health of this irreplaceable landscape," Kristen Moreland, executive director of Gwich'in Steering Committee, toldBloomberg News. "Every oil company stayed away from the first lease sale, and we expect them to do the same during the second."

The record of decision concludes the Bureau of Land Management's process for developing a supplemental environmental impact statement, which was required after President-elect Donald Trump's first administration completed an analysis with "fundamental flaws and legal errors," as the Sierra Club said Monday.

Selling the drilling rights just before Trump takes office could complicate the GOP's plans to hold a more expansive sale later on, but Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign, emphasized that regardless of who is in office when the sale takes place, "oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge is a direct threat to some of the last untouched landscapes on Alaska's North Slope and to the caribou herds that the Gwich'in people rely on."

"The 2017 tax act, forced through Congress by Donald Trump and his Big Oil CEO allies, opened up the Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing," said Ritzman. "Letting him oversee a lease sale over these pristine lands would be beyond irresponsible. In the meantime, President [Joe] Biden should listen to the Gwich'in and do all that he can to preserve these lands and waters. His legacy is on the line."

Erik Grafe, an attorney at environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the group is "committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction."

"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said Grafe. "Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich'in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers."

Defenders of Wildlife called on Congress to repeal the 2017 tax law's mandate for leasing sales in the "iconic American landscape" of the Arctic Refuge.

"Turning the coastal plain into an oilfield will obliterate the pristine wilderness of the Arctic Refuge," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska senior program director for the group, "directly threatening the future of the Porcupine caribou herd and the physical, cultural, and spiritual existence of the Gwich'in people who depend on them."