Govt to open up vast area for new oil and gas drilling

The Biden administration plans to offer hundreds of thousands of hectares off the coast of Alaska for new oil and gas drilling next month, a sale mandated in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act to win the support of holdout West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. The auction of more than 388,000 ha in Alaska’s Cook Inlet next month, could produce nearly 200 million barrels of crude and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas.