Tax bill opens Arctic refuge

Drilling would likely face reviews, lawsuits

• Congress is close to lifting a 40- year- old ban on energy development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but drilling for oil in the frozen wilderness may still be years away as the effort faces exhaustive environmental reviews and likely lawsuits.

It could be a decade or more before any well is drilled, following required environmental scrutiny and permit reviews — and then the inevitable lawsuits from local communities and environmental groups opposed to any development.

“It’s still an open question about whether drilling will ever happen there,” said Matt Lee-Ashley at the Center for American Progress and former Interior Department official. “It’s hard to image that drilling will occur in the next 10 years — or ever.”

The House voted Tuesday for a tax bill that includes a provision mandating that the Interior Department hold lease sales in the socalled 1002 area of the Arctic Refuge, a coastal portion of the 19-million-acre federally protected wilderness area. The refuge is estimated to contain 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable crude.

The Senate was to vote on the measure later Tuesday. If passed, it will go to President Donald Trump for his signature. Republicans included a provision that would have sped up federal environmental reviews, but that was stripped out of the measure because it ran afoul of budget rules.

Drilling proponents say they are undaunted by the idea of a long wait.

“The United States really needs to find new places to prospect for oil, not for today, but for the future,” said Robert Dillon, a consultant and former aide to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. “You need to be looking 10, 20, 30 years out to know where your supply is going to come from for the future of the country.”

But environmentalists who successfully f ought ANWR drilling for decades aren’t giving up. Their battle is just shifting from Capitol Hill to federal courtrooms.

“The fight has just begun,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee that was formed in 1988 to combat oil drilling proposals.

“We will rise up and protect the Arctic Refuge and the ‘Sacred Place Where Life Begins’ just as our ancestors have before us.”

IT’S HARD TO IMAGE THAT DRILLING WILL OCCUR IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS.