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Donald Trump points his finger during a campaign rally at Laughlin / Bullhead International Airport in Bullhead City, Arizona, USA, October 28, 2020.
- The Trump administration is trying to speed up the issuance of oil and gas leases before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.
- Biden has promised to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but the auction for drilling rights is scheduled for January 6.
- Biden will take office on January 20.
The Trump administration is rushing to sell the oil extraction rights at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Joe Biden takes office so the president-elect cannot revoke the contracts.
The Interior Department announced Thursday that it will hold the auction on January 6, an accelerated schedule meant to ensure that oil and gas leases are formally issued before Biden is sworn in on January 20. Biden has promised to permanently protect the shelter, but formal leases are contracts with the federal government and are difficult to cancel.
“Congress directed us to conduct lease sales in the ANWR Coastal Plain, and we have taken a significant step by announcing the first sale,” said Chad Padgett, Alaska Director for the Bureau of Land Management, in a press release. . “Oil and gas from the coastal plain is an important resource in meeting our nation’s long-term energy demands and will help create jobs and economic opportunity.”
The Department of the Interior must hold two oil and gas lease auctions in the refuge’s coastal plain by Dec. 22, 2024 under a Congressional plan to offset the cost of the 2017 tax cuts. But environmentalists and indigenous people Alaskans, including Gwich’in who consider the area sacred, say the action endangers a wild home for caribou, migratory birds and other species.
They have pledged to fight the new sale plan in court, building on other litigation already challenging the Interior Department’s earlier decision to open the 1.56 million acres of the coastal plain for oil leasing.
“The Trump administration is hell-bent on selling the Arctic refuge on its way out, to hell with the rules and the laws,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But they have messed up the leasing process – suppressing the science, taking shortcuts, ignoring the rights and voices of the Gwich’in people – that all this waste can and should be thrown away by the courts or the next administration. “
The Department of the Interior is releasing the formal sale notice before it finishes requesting information on which specific tranches should be up for auction. The agency had given oil companies until December 17 to make recommendations and told a federal court it would publish a notice of sale “later” if it decided to hold an auction.
“Cutting off public comment by noticing a lease sale in the middle of an open comment period is politically motivated and legally questionable,” said Brook Brisson, a senior attorney with Trustees for Alaska, who represents groups challenging the plans. of the administration in the courts.
Details of the terms of sale, including the minimum required bids, will be posted on Monday.
The sale date gives the Trump administration two weeks to formally issue any leases sold at auction before Biden is sworn in as president. That process of vetting the highest bidders and submitting them to a Justice Department review typically takes months, but Interior officials have been strategizing ways to speed it up.
It’s unclear which oil companies could come up for auction, given the current economic environment, regulatory uncertainty and strong public opposition to drilling in the Arctic. Companies that were once considered potential bidders for the Arctic surface have cut spending this year as the coronavirus pandemic eroded demand and prices for crude. Conservationists have identified a handful of little-known Alaskan oil explorers, speculators, and interests that could compete for drilling rights to the coastal plain.
Any investment in the Arctic refuge’s oil rights is unlikely to see action in the next four years. Although the Biden administration has little power to revoke leases, it can block essential permits to mount any activity on the tracts.
