The Trump administration on Friday will start the process of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling.
The Interior Department will publish a notice in the Federal Register of its intent to do a draft environmental impact statement for energy leasing in the refuge known as ANWR. The agency will accept public comments for 60 days starting Friday.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said last month the Interior Department could have the first lease sale to oil and gas drillers in 2019.
Joe Balash, Interior’s assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management, told local media in Alaska last month he is hopeful the agency can meet that goal.
He said the notice in the Federal Register that kicks off the “scoping” period will let people “talk to us about a range of issues needing to be considered” during the development of a draft environmental impact statement, before Interior develops a final statement.
“We welcome this scoping announcement and the department’s continued work to implement our legislation opening the coastal plain to responsible energy development,” Sullivan said in a statement with fellow Alaska Republicans Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Don Young. “We appreciate the department following the law, planning multiple public meetings with Alaskans, and moving forward on this important program to help ensure the energy and economic security of our nation.”
Conservation groups condemned Interior’s first formal step to begin drilling.
“The Department of the Interior is pursuing an irresponsibly aggressive timeline for Arctic Refuge drilling that reflects the Trump administration’s eagerness to turn over America’s public lands to private industry for development,” said Jamie Williams, the president of the Wilderness Society. “By pushing for a lease sale next year, the administration is admitting that they have no intention of seriously evaluating the negative impacts of oil development on wildlife and these wild lands, which science tells us are significant.”
ANWR was created under President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960. In 1980, Congress provided additional protections to the refuge but set aside a 1.5 million-acre section known as the “1002 area,” where billions of barrels of crude oil lie beneath the coastal plain, for study and future drilling if lawmakers approved it.
Republicans last year were successful in achieving their long-pursued goal to allow energy exploration in the area as part of their tax overhaul legislation.
Democrats and environmentalists say drilling would harm the ecosystem of what they describe as one of the wildest places left on earth, inhabited by animals such as polar bears, caribou, and arctic foxes.
Republicans expect drilling in ANWR to raise $1 billion over a decade to help pay for tax reform, but Democrats contend that won’t happen in light of low oil prices and steep competition from natural gas.
Under the tax law, the Interior Department must hold the first lease sale by 2021 and another by 2024, with at least 400,000 acres available each time.
