In September President Obama created the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, roping off around 5,000 square miles in waters near the coast of Cape Cod. The month before, he designated over 440,000 square miles in the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii.
Now, as the president begins his lame duck stint, environmental groups are pressuring him to turn his focus to Arctic waters, with the goal of permanently banning oil and gas development in the region. And that prospect has become even more likely following last week’s election result and the advent of a Trump Administration, which has pledged to provide industry with greater access.
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President Obama’s use of the 1906 Antiquities Act is already unmatched. In an effort to secure his environmental legacy, his administration has created or enlarged 26 national monuments since 2011, including 14 in just the past year and a half, collectively totaling more than 750,000 square miles.
There are two major concerns with this development.
First, any national monument designation is effectively final. That means portions of America’s Arctic Ocean bestowed with monument status would be removed from oil and gas development forever, even if a later administration, with the benefit of hindsight, wanted to reverse the order.
And second, approval from Congress or local communities is not required for a designation. Under the Antiquities Act, the president merely denotes an area as having significance – scientific, natural or cultural – to justify the creation of a monument.
As the Department of Interior nears its announcement of the areas available for development in the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, and the prospect of Arctic leases being made available in the medium term returns, this is especially troubling. If environmental groups are successful in banning offshore oil and gas development, it will have dire and lasting consequences.
Removing oil and gas leasing in the Arctic will significantly impede our national security in the region. This is why 16 high-ranking military officials, including former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and former Supreme Allied Commander and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Ralston, submitted comments to the Department of Interior, supporting the inclusion of Arctic Leases in the 2017-2022 OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program.
Without Arctic development and investment, the U.S. will also continue to fall behind other Arctic nations like Russia, forfeiting not only military presence, but also trade and resources. As retired four-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO General Philip Breedlove recently put it,
“Along that route [the Northern Sea Route] what we see is Russia upgrading over 50 airfields and ports, 14 of them to be done this year, increasing the number of ground troops, putting in surface-to-air missiles, putting in sensors that could be used to guide weapons. That could be used to deny access.”
Development is also, of course, a key economic driver for Alaska, estimated to generate about 55,000 jobs annually and nearly $154 billion over the next five decades. Restricting access to offshore resources through a monuments designation would significantly hinder an Alaskan economy already faced with the challenge of making up for reduced access to available onshore reserves due to regulatory overreach. And in a supreme irony of unintended consequences, it would also make the lives of the Native communities, communities it is partially designed to protect, harder, by further reducing opportunities for subsistence hunting.
Finally by removing the Arctic from possible development, the Administration is turning down revenue from lease sales. According to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, the federal government generated over $5 billion from all offshore oil and gas activities in fiscal year 2015. From the 2008 Arctic offshore lease auction alone, the federal government generated $2.7 billion in high bids.
With such a massive amount of non-tax revenue stemming from offshore oil and gas development in the Arctic, and given that no Congressional oversight is required to designate a national monument, it begs the question: would this designation for the Arctic even be constitutional?
Removing the Arctic from development for the sole purpose of the boosting a legacy is, at best, shortsighted. Doing so not only fails to account for the myriad benefits lost both regionally and nationally. It actively neglects the opinions of the Alaska Natives who have lived in the region for thousands of years, other Alaskans, Congress and the likely view of the president-elect.
Drue Pearce is senior policy advisor with Crowell & Moring. He served in the Alaska State Legislature for 17 years, including as senate president for two terms. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
