Trump reopens Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling

The Trump administration is opening the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas leasing, reversing a Biden administration decision that put the pristine wilderness area off limits.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the agency was opening the 1.56 million acres of tundra on the state’s North Slope and holding a lease sale in the winter in the nearby National Petroleum Reserve. It’s the latest move by President Trump’s administration to boost domestic fossil fuel production.

“This land should and will be supporting responsible oil and gas leasing,” Burgum said during an event at the Interior Department’s headquarters in Washington on Thursday.

The coastal plain of the refuge is estimated to hold billions of barrels of crude oil. But many oil companies have been reluctant to target the area, given the high costs. Environmentalists and native Alaskans argue oil development in the region risks imperiling arctic foxes, polar bears and caribou.

“Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is reckless,” Bobby McEnaney, a director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “The market has said no — banks and insurers won’t back it, lease sales flopped, and taxpayers are left holding the bag. Public lands must serve people, wildlife, and a livable climate — not host a fire sale for fossil fuel companies.”

During Trump’s first term, Congress lifted a 40-year-old ban on energy development in the refuge in 2017, mandating lease sales. President Biden then canceled leases sold in 2021 and barred exploration in more than half of the nearby National Petroleum Reserve.

Not a single company opted to bid in two additional lease sales in the region mandated by Congress and held just days before Biden left office. Oil industry representatives and Alaska officials, however, complained the lease sale’s structure discouraged bidding from the start.

The Interior Department also said Thursday that it had brokered a land-exchange deal that would allow construction of a contentious road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska’s southwest.

Natter writes for Bloomberg.