Biden plans to halt oil activity in Arctic refuge

JUNOAU, ALASKA >> President Joe Biden on Wednesday signaled plans to place a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after the Trump administration issued leases in a remote, rugged area considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in.

The plans, along with other proposed executive actions, were announced on a fact sheet by the new administration on Biden’s inauguration day.

Issuing leases had been a priority of the Trump administration following a 2017 law calling for lease sales, said Lesli Ellis-Wouters, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

The agency held the first lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain on Jan. 6. Eight days later, Ellis-Wouters said, it signed leases for nine tracts totaling nearly 685 square miles. However, the issuance of the leases was not announced publicly until Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s last full day in office.

Ellis-Wouters said in an email Wednesday morning that the agency had not yet received official guidance on any presidential orders.

E. Colleen Bryan, a spokesperson for the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, said the state corporation, which was issued seven leases and was the main bidder in the lease sale, “can’t speculate what may happen with the new administration.”

Biden has opposed drilling in the region and the new administration announced plans for an executive order that would temporarily halt lease activities there. Drilling opponents hope it is a step toward providing permanent protections, which Biden called for during the presidential campaign.

The fight to open the coastal plain to drilling goes back decades, with the state’s Republican congressional delegation hailing the issuance of leases as “significant and meaningful for Alaska’s future.”

Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a statement that Americans did not give Biden “a mandate to kill good-paying jobs and curry favor with coastal elites.”

Sullivan added that he “will do everything in my power ... to fight back against these job-killing orders and regulatory reviews.”