Biden rolls back Trump’s oil leasing plan in petroleum reserve, reducing acreage available for exploration

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Jan. 10 it will roll back key Trump administration changes in and oil and gas leasing plan for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska but will retain parts of the plan that strengthened environmental protections.

Basically, the revision would return to a 2013 leasing plan adopted by the Obama administration that would make 11.8 million acres or about half of the 23-million-acre federal reserve open to leasing while keeping half in a restricted or protected status.

The Trump plan, adopted in 2020, expanded the acreage available and would have put 18.6 million acres of the 23 million acres in NPR-A up for leasing.

In its announcement BLM also said it

would retain several environmental protections that were added by the Trump plan, however, particularly a set of more restrictive lease stipulations and operating procedures designed to protect threatened and endangered species.

Procedurally, BLM said it has filed a notice that it will select a “no action” alternative in the 2020 Integrated Activity Plan for the petroleum reserve, which has the effect of returning to the 2013 plan developed by Sally Jewell, Obama’s Secretary of the Interior.

If the plan moves forward the BLM will issue a revised Record of Decision to cement the action.

Most of the recent exploration and leasing activity in the NPR-A has been focused on the northeast part of the reserve which geologists feel has more oil and gas potential. Several discoveries have been made in recent years and two medium-sized projects developed by ConocoPhillips are now producing.

Controversy has developed, however, over efforts in the Trump plan to open coastal areas of the reserve that are felt to be highy prospective but which are also sensitive habitat for waterfowl and threatened species like polar bears.

Parts of this area have been closed to exploration and then opened, most recently by Trump, but with drilling and other restrictions. The new plan under the Biden administration closes off the area again but leaves some protections added under the Trump plan still applicable in nearby areas that would still be opens.

Not surprisingly, the action brought criticism from Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the state’s senior senator, said “BLM claims a need for ‘greater balance’ in managing this area but fails to realize that balance is what will be lost through this move,” which would close most of the reserve and its most prospective area.

“This is a petroleum reserve specifically designed for energy development, located within a state that already has tens of millions of acres of parks, refuges and federal wilderness,” Murkowski said.

The current (Trump) management plan was designed to protect the reserve’s most sensitive areas and includes several safeguards, the senator said in a statement.

“Sweeping restrictions like this, which are being imposed even as the Biden administration implores OPEC to produce more oil, demonstrates everything that is wrong,” with the president’s energy policies, Murkowski said.

NPR-A was created in 1923 by President Warren Harding as Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 to serve as a potential oil reserve for the U.S. Navy.

There was no exploration until after World War II, however. Despite several decades of drilling led by the Navy and then the U.S. Geological Survey there were no significant oil and gas discoveries until the reserve was opened for private exploration in the 1980s.

Three medium-sized projects now producing are CD 5, GMT 1 and GMT 2, all by ConocoPhillips. A third discovery that is larger, Willow, is planned for development but is on hold because of litigation brought by conservation groups.