The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it scheduled a Jan. 6 lease sale for companies to earn the chance to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a fast-tracked move intended to make it more difficult for President-elect Joe Biden to overturn it.
Biden has vowed to ban drilling in the Alaska refuge permanently, declaring himself “totally opposed” to disturbing the status quo in a long off-limits area that environmentalists consider to be one of the wildest places left on Earth.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management is eager to conduct a lease sale before Biden takes office to make it more difficult for him to reverse, since oil and gas leases on federal lands are considered government contracts.
Interior said it is delivering on a mandate from the 2017 Republican tax cut bill allowing energy exploration in a 1.56 million-acre section of the 19.3 million-acre refuge, known as the “1002 area,” where billions of barrels of oil are believed to lie beneath the coastal plain.
“The law makes oil and gas development one of the purposes of the refuge, clearly directing [us] to carry out an aggressive, competitive exploration and development program for the potentially energy-rich coastal plain,” said BLM Alaska State Director Chad Padgett.
But oil companies still might not be able to use the permits, with other hoops to jump through before actual drilling in the refuge could begin, likely a yearslong process.
It’s also uncertain how interested energy companies would be in the opportunity, with low prices and demand, along with investor pressure pushing big banks to avoid lending to companies doing Arctic drilling.
“We’re counting on the Biden administration and the courts to protect polar bears and our climate where Trump wouldn’t,” said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
