In a ‘desperate’ act to secure climate legacy, Biden admin offers restricted Alaska oil lease sale

With President Joe Biden heading out the door and looking to secure his climate legacy before GOP President-elect DonaldTrump takes office, the Bureau of Land Management this week  offered the fewest possible acres in a mandatory oil-and-gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It was the latest and perhaps the last in a string of decisions the Biden administration has made in its efforts to limit oil, gas and mineral development on public lands, including those in Alaska. 

In March 2023, the BLM limited 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas drilling, while blocking drilling on 2.8 million acres of Beaufort Sea. In September 2023, the Biden administration canceled seven oil and gas leases in the ANWR.

"With today's action no one will have rights to drill oil in one of the most sensitive landscapes on Earth," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told reporters at the time. 

Political football

While Biden approved the Willow Project in Alaska, which has a potential to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day, for Alaska Natives who depend on revenues and jobs from the development of resources in the region, the decisions limiting or blocking drilling everywhere else have hit hard. 

The Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat (VOICE), a nonprofit advocacy group for Native-American communities living on the state’s North Slope, filed a lawsuit in July against the BLM and Haaland over the NPR-A rule, arguing the decision was made without any meaningful engagement with the North Slope Iñupiat, despite unanimous opposition from the elected leaders of the communities. 

For the VOICE, the decision Monday to offer only 400,000 acres for oil and gas leases in the ANWR was just another disappointment from the outgoing administration. 

In a statement, Doreen Leavitt, tribal secretary and director of Natural Resources for the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, called the Biden administration’s action a “desperate” act in the president’s last days in office. 

“We see this ROD [Record of Decision] for what it is: a defeated administration treating our people as a political football in a Hail Mary attempt to score political points before it leaves office. But we are not a political football. We deserve to be at the policymaking table to help shape policies that impact our homelands and advance our self-determination,” Leavitt said. 

Insult to injury

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed by Trump during his first term, mandated the lease sale, and the day after November’s election, in which Trump won a second term, the Biden administration issued a plan as part of a supplemental environmental impact statement that proposed a much more limited amount of oil development than authorized by the first Trump administration. 

“As the only community that exists within ANWR, Kaktovik should have been included at the policymaking table throughout this policymaking process," Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation President Charles Lampe said in a statement. "There’s a reason that the people of Kaktovik voted over 75% in favor of the Trump-Vance political ticket. This current administration keeps adding insult to injury with their flawed processes, falsely claiming to work with those who this will most affect.” 

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, told Reuters the Biden administration was ignoring the will of Alaskan Natives who want oil and gas development in the ANWR. 

"The good news is we will soon be working with the Trump administration that, unlike Biden-Harris, has a proven track record of responsible oil and gas production and Alaska resource development, and respects the voices of the Iñupiat people of the North Slope," he told the wire service. 

Trump’s nomination for Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, the governor of oil-rich of North Dakota, is expected to be much more friendly toward oil and gas production on public lands. Nagruk Harcharek, president of the VOICE, told Just the News in November that the community members of the organization are expecting Burgum to be far more willing to give them a seat at the table when making decisions impacting the North Slope. 

Troubling chapter

Environmental groups opposed to oil and gas development in Alaska cheered the BLM’s decision to limit the leases. 

San Francisco-based Earthjustice attorney Erik Grafe, who has led litigation to block oil and gas development in Alaska, said in a statement that doing so in the ANWR is “all risk with no reward.” The nonprofit environmental law group, which brought in over $131 million in 2023, vowed to launch more litigation to stop any attempt to drill in the area. 

 “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,” Grafe said. 

He didn’t explain how a product that is the basis for 84% of the nation’s energy and thousands of products has no benefits to consumers. 

According to the BLM, the area offered for sale avoids important polar bear denning and Porcupine Caribou Herd calving areas. Leasing, the BLM notes, is only the first step in a long process oil companies are required to go through. Any permits or authorizations for oil and gas development following the lease sales would still need to go through the National Environmental Policy Act process before any production could occur. 

The Native Alaskans who are hoping to benefit from oil and gas extraction say they are looking forward to working with the new administration. 

“Our region voted to close this deeply troubling chapter with the current federal government in the hope of building a new relationship characterized by better engagement and cooperation with the only people that live within not only ANWR, but the Coastal Plain,” Lampe, the head of the Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation, said.