President Joe Biden “doesn’t have the authority” to restrict new oil and gas leasing on federal petroleum reserves in Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said Sunday in response to the Democratic administration’s environmental protection plan.
“Leaders of the North Slope of Alaska were unanimous in opposition to this,” Sullivan said Sunday, adding that Biden was not being forthright about the wants of Alaska Native communities in regard to the new oil and gas leasing rule. Sullivan’s comments come days after the Biden administration finalized a rule on Friday to freeze new fossil fuel leases on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
In a statement released Friday, Biden touted the restrictions, saying that he is “proud that my Administration is taking action to conserve more than 13 million acres in the Western Arctic and to honor the culture, history, and enduring wisdom of Alaska Natives who have lived on and stewarded these lands since time immemorial.”
The reserve is more than 23 million acres of public land and is also an underground emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy that was designated in the 1920s. It’s also become the site of the ConocoPhillips-owned Willow project, an oil drilling venture that has angered some environmental advocates.
“As I say, [it’s] national security suicide,” Sullivan said on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, calling it “a lie” for the Biden administration to claim that the indigenous population of Alaska wanted the new anti-drilling rule.
“It is a lie. Go see what the indigenous people of Alaska from my part of the state said,” Sullivan said, adding, “It’s lawless, and he doesn’t have the authority to do it.”
Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat President Nagruk Harcharek said Friday that Biden’s final rule “does not reflect our communities’ wishes,” according to CNN. Harcharek said the decision to ban drilling will “hurt the very residents the federal government purports to help by rolling back years of progress, impoverishing our communities, and imperiling our Iñupiaq culture.”
The Biden administration on Friday also moved to roll back a Trump administration-approved Ambler road construction in the Alaskan wilderness. The road, if built, would create an access point for a proposed copper and zinc mine. The Interior Department under Biden said it wanted “no action” taken on the mine, and effectively blocked the road’s access to the federal land.
Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, who made history as the first Native American to serve as Cabinet secretary, said the Biden administration’s Alaska conservation plan would “underscore our commitment to ensure that places too special to develop remain intact for the communities and species that rely on them.”
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But Sullivan said that Alaskan Natives “tried to meet with Secretary Haaland, and she wouldn’t meet with them, adding that now “They’re very upset.”
“And the president was canceling their voices and now stealing their voices, it was really a despicable move,” Sullivan said.