What’s next now that drilling in Arctic refuge gets the OK?
With President Donald Trump’s signature affixed to the new tax bill, a decadesold ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska is officially lifted. Here’s a look at what might happen now.
Will oil and gas exploration begin immediately?
No. Both supporters and opponents say it could be years before the first lease sale, a precursor to any drilling. The new legislation requires that the Department of Interior conduct one sale within four years and a second within seven. But there are many steps that must be taken before those sales can be conducted, and the process is not completely clear. Lawsuits and other actions by opponents of drilling could slow the process, both before and after any lease sales.
The Interior Department will have to identify lands in the 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coastal plain, known as the 1002 area, for leases. Once the department comes up with a list of options, there will be at least one comment period in which the public will have a chance to be heard.
One question mark is whether new seismic studies will be undertaken. Such studies can reveal underground formations that have high oil development potential, and the only ones that were done in the refuge are more than three decades old.
Based on the old studies, the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the 1002 area contains from 5 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil. David W. Houseknecht, a senior research geologist with the survey, said the agency was about to re-analyze the data using improved software in hopes of reducing the uncertainty of that estimate. But new studies using modern three-dimensional technology could produce even better estimates.
The Interior Department in September proposed allowing new studies, but it is unclear whether oil companies, if allowed, would undertake them, or whether the Interior Department would wait for them to be done before conducting a sale. Oil companies have bid on drilling leases in other areas with less-than-ideal information.
What can Democrats do?
For now, not much. The Democrats’ ability to halt progress toward drilling in the refuge hinges on the party’s ability to recapture the majority in one or both houses of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.
“We’re going to take our case to the American public now,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-wash., who has led the fight against drilling in the refuge, said Thursday.
Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-mass., said he believed voter outrage was coalescing around a number of Trump administration actions, including rolling back environmental regulations and moving to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change. Opening the Arctic refuge to drilling will be a “tipping point” with voters, he predicted.