Trump administration to open more Alaska acres for oil, gas drilling

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday announced steps to open up more acreage for oil and gas leasing and lift restrictions on building an LNG pipeline and mining road in Alaska, carrying out President Donald Trump's executive order to remove barriers to energy development in the state.

Burgum said the agency plans to reopen the 82% of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve that is available for leasing for development and reopen the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing.

He also said the administration would revoke restrictions on land along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River and convey the land to the State of Alaska, which would pave the way forward for the proposed Ambler Road and the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas Pipeline project.

“It’s time for the U.S. to embrace Alaska’s abundant and largely untapped resources as a pathway to prosperity for the Nation, including Alaskans,” said Burgum.

Drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic refuge has long been a source of friction between Alaska lawmakers and tribal corporations seeking to open more acres to drilling to spur economic growth, and Democratic presidential administrations that sought to preserve the local ecosystem and wildlife.

A January 8 lease auction that had been mandated by Congress held under the Biden administration's Interior Department received no bids from energy companies.

The Biden administration last year rejected the Ambler Road Project, a proposed 211-mile road that would connect to a rare earths mining district.

Alaska's Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy and the state's congressional delegation have pushed for a reversal of Biden's Alaska resource development policies.

Some Alaska indigenous nations have also called for the right to develop resources in ANWR and the National Petroleum Reserve, and welcomed the announcement.

“We applaud today’s decision by DOI and Secretary Burgum," said Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation President Charles Lampe. "As the only community within ANWR’s 19-million-acre boundaries, we have fought for years for our right to self-determination and local economic development in our Indigenous homelands.

The oil industry has signalled it would be hesitant to rush into Alaska given its high risk and the possibility of a political pendulum swing in four years that could put Alaska off limits again.

Environmental groups criticized the move that would disturb what they call one of the last wild places on earth, putting caribou, polar bears and migratory birds at risk.

"Expanding oil drilling across public lands in the Arctic is risky, harmful to the health and well-being of people who reside nearby, devastating to wildlife and bad for the climate,” said Carole Holley, Managing Attorney in Earthjustice’s Alaska Regional Office.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; editing by Diane Craft)