{"id":62720,"date":"2020-08-17T06:35:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/us-approves-oil-gas-leasing-plan-for-alaska-wildlife-refuge\/"},"modified":"2020-08-17T18:14:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T02:14:00","slug":"us-approves-oil-gas-leasing-plan-for-alaska-wildlife-refuge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/us-approves-oil-gas-leasing-plan-for-alaska-wildlife-refuge\/","title":{"rendered":"US approves oil, gas leasing plan for Alaska Wildlife refuge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><ins><strong>By MARK THIESSEN<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n<p><ins><em>Associated Press<\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska &mdash; The Trump administration gave final approval Monday for a contentious oil and gas leasing plan on the coastal plain of Alaska&rsquo;s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where critics worry about the industry&rsquo;s impact on polar bears, caribou and other wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>The next step, barring lawsuits, will be the actual sale of leases. Development &mdash; should it occur &mdash; is still years away.<\/p>\n<p>Environmentalists have promised to fight opening up the coastal plain, a 1.56-million acre swath of land along Alaska&rsquo;s northern Beaufort Sea coast after the Department of the Interior approved an oil and gas leasing program.<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt signed the Record of Decision, which will determine a program for where oil and gas leasing will take place.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The establishment of this program marks a new chapter in American energy independence,&rdquo; Bernhardt said during a conference call with reporters.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Years of inaction have given away to an informed and determined plan to responsibly tap ANWR&rsquo;s energy potential for the American people for generations to come,&rdquo; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past four decades, Republicans have attempted to open the refuge to drilling. President Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican bill to allow drilling in 1995, and Democrats blocked a similar plan 10 years later. President Trump insisted Congress include a mandate providing for leasing in the refuge in a 2017 tax bill.<\/p>\n<p>The Interior&rsquo;s Bureau of Land Management in December 2018 concluded drilling could be conducted within the coastal plain area without harming wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Today&rsquo;s announcement marks a milestone in Alaska&rsquo;s 40-year journey to responsibly develop our state and our nation&rsquo;s new energy frontier,&rdquo; Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1221\" height=\"687\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YR_lljfXEhc\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Republican governor called the decision &ldquo;a definitive step in the right direction to developing this area&rsquo;s energy potential,&rdquo; which he estimated at 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves.<\/p>\n<p>Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the opportunity offered by opening the coastal plain &ldquo;is needed both now, as Alaskans navigate incredibly challenging times, and well into the future as we seek a lasting economic foundation for our state.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Through this program, we will build on our already-strong record of an increasingly minimal footprint for responsible resource development.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Trump in 2018 said he hadn&rsquo;t felt strongly about opening the refuge, but had insisted it be included in the tax bill at the urging of others. He also said a friend told him that every Republican president since Ronald Reagan had tried and failed to open the refuge to drilling.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I really didn&rsquo;t care about it, and then when I heard that everybody wanted it &mdash; for 40 years, they&rsquo;ve been trying to get it approved, and I said, &lsquo;Make sure you don&rsquo;t lose ANWR,&rsquo;&rdquo; Trump said at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to protect the refuge.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;His plan released last year made clear that he will permanently protect ANWR and other areas impacted by President Trump&rsquo;s attacks on federal lands and waters,&rdquo; campaign spokesperson Matt Hill said.<\/p>\n<p>Environmental groups immediately assailed opening the refuge and promised litigation.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The Trump administration&rsquo;s so-called review process for their shameless sell-off of the Arctic refuge has been a sham from the start. We&rsquo;ll see them in court,&rdquo; said Lena Moffitt with the Our Wild America campaign of the Sierra Club.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This administration has done nothing but disrespect the Indigenous peoples that have occupied these lands,&rdquo; Gwich&rsquo;in Steering Committee Executive Director Bernadette Demientieff said.<\/p>\n<p>The coastal plain is calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which includes about 200,000 animals, &ldquo;Our ways of life, our food security, and our identity is not up for negotiation. The fight is not over,&rdquo; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, said the Interior decision won&rsquo;t stand.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The environmental analysis underpinning this decision is so laughably indefensible that either the courts or a future presidential administration will have no trouble tossing it in the dustbin of history,&rdquo; Lee-Ashely said.<\/p>\n<p>Frank Macchiarola, a senior vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, said the rigorous environmental review process confirms the industry&rsquo;s ability to develop responsibly.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The industry has a well-established record of safe and environmentally responsible development of Alaska&rsquo;s energy resources and has been recognized for its success in being respectful of Alaska&rsquo;s wildlife and surrounding communities,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Advancements in technology and commitments to environmental stewardship &#8211; including for over 50 years in Alaska&rsquo;s Arctic &#8211; have enabled America&rsquo;s oil and natural gas industry to safely meet decades of demand for affordable, reliable and cleaner energy.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Bernhardt said the program should stand up to legal challenges or the whims of future presidential administrations.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Congress has mandated these lease sales, and so they have to go forward in some regard. They can&rsquo;t just simply unduly delay, so that is a reality that Congress created,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And really, absent a change in the law, the question of whether or not there will be a program in ANWR has really been answered.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The decision makes the entire coastal plain &mdash; 8% of the 19.3-million-acre refuge &mdash; available for oil and gas leasing and potential development. The Department of the Interior said the plan includes protections for habitat and wildlife, including operational time limits on 585,400 acres.<\/p>\n<p>Bernhardt said there will be at least two area-wide leasing sales of at least 400,000 acres each. The first will be held before Dec. 22, 2021, and the second by Dec. 22, 2024.<\/p>\n<p><ins><em>&#8226; This is an Associated Press report. <\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><ins><strong>By MARK THIESSEN<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":62721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[150],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-62720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62720"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=62720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}