Biden Makes Last-Minute Bid to Slow Arctic Oil Drilling
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The Biden administration advanced a plan to limit oil drilling and infrastructure across more of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a bid to lock in land protections and conservation requirements days before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The Interior Department’s Jan. 16 move represents the latest step by outgoing President Joe Biden to enshrine protections that could complicate Trump plans to rapidly expand oil and gas development across U.S. federal lands and waters. In recent weeks, Biden also has designated new national monuments and ruled out the sale of drilling rights in more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters.
In the latest action, the Interior Department is proposing new “special area” designations that would restrict drilling and other activities across more than 3 million acres of the reserve in northwest Alaska once earmarked for energy development.
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The agency also is imposing measures meant to avoid damage to those areas even while they’re being considered for protection, raising the hurdle for building roads and other infrastructure across the tracts.
The move could have implications for companies that have had holdings or interests in the reserve, including ConocoPhillips, Santos, Repsol and Armstrong Oil & Gas.
Although Trump could cast aside his predecessor’s plan for more special areas and ignore the interim safeguards the Interior Department is imposing in the meantime, the action could be challenged in federal court. The report and memo unveiled Jan. 16 bolsters the government record for those safeguards, providing potential fodder for any future legal battle.
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The newly recommended special areas come roughly six months after the Interior Department first asked the public to nominate parcels for protection. The agency already finalized a plan last year that bars drilling across nearly half of the NPR-A.
The 23-million-acre site — home to ConocoPhillips’ mammoth Willow oil project — was set aside for oil supply needs roughly a century ago. However, conservationists argue new industrial drilling operations threaten critical wildlife habitat, including dwindling caribou herds indigenous people depend on for subsistence.
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“Fish and wildlife have provided food for Alaska Native people in this region for millennia and, based on the information we received and our legal mandate, we have concluded it is necessary to commence a process to ensure its protection,” acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said.
The Interior Department’s actions do not affect valid, existing rights within the NPR-A. However, the recommended special areas overlap with existing leases, including some held by ConocoPhillips and Oil Search.
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