The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will cancel all oil and natural gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were sold under the Trump administration, a move that federal officials said is to protect the region’s array of wildlife and combat climate change.
Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland authorized the cancellations of seven leases held by Alaska’s state-owned economic development agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, in the remote coastal region that sprawls more than 19 million acres bordering Canada to the east and the Beaufort Sea to the north.
Ms. Haaland said a draft environmental impact statement by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the Trump administration’s lease sales were “seriously flawed” and were based on “fundamental legal deficiencies,” including insufficient analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and the absence of an analysis on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Interior Department also unveiled a new regulatory rule to prevent new drilling across 13 million acres of Alaska’s 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve situated west of the wildlife refuge that was originally designated 100 years ago as an emergency U.S. Navy oil supply because of its vast underground resources.
The proposed rule and lease cancellations, combined with past protections under the Biden administration, will mean no new oil and gas leases will be permitted anywhere in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean.
“With today’s action, no one will have rights to drill for oil in one of the most sensitive landscapes on Earth,” Ms. Haaland told reporters. “Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime, and we cannot ignore the disproportionate impacts being felt in the Arctic.”
The lease cancellations appeased climate activists who say Mr. Biden has done too little to curtail new fossil fuel drilling on federal lands and in waters. But it played into criticism from Republicans and the energy sector that his environmental agenda is inflating costs by stifling domestic production.
“This is another nail in the coffin of the White House lie that Joe Biden isn’t standing in the way of American energy production,” said Daniel Turner, executive director of the non-profit fossil fuel advocacy group Power the Future. “As families are dealing with rising gas prices, President Biden is working to ensure his radical green agenda comes first.”
The announcements came just months after the administration infuriated environmentalists by greenlighting Alaska’s Willow oil project, a decades-long venture by ConocoPhillips in the National Petroleum Reserve.
The new protections were lauded by climate groups.
“We applaud President Biden and Secretary Haaland for these significant steps to protect Arctic communities and our climate,” said League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld. “These proposed protections are vitally important for this unique and sacred landscape.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.