Governor: Biden’s latest move on ANWR to “appease radical environmental groups determined to turn our state into one big national park”

Alaska officials reacted strongly to the U.S. Interior Department’s Aug. 2 announcement that the agency will reopen the 2019 Trump administration’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The environmental impact statement and a subsequent Record of Decision cleared the way for a January 2021 lease sale in the refuge held by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Corri Feige, Alaska’s Commissioner of Natural Resources said the plan for a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, or SEISm “is clearly a move to change the outcome of the 2020 Record of Decision,” that favored leasing.

Biden’s Interior Department cited deficiencies and errors in a June decision to pause approvals of leasing activities in ANWR, which also setting the stage for the new environmental review. Feige said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has yet to identify problems in the 2020 environmental analysis.

“They’re simply redoing the process to change the outcome,” Feige said.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy had stronger words: “This is another example of the Biden Administration attempting to shut down Alaska’s primary industry to appease radical environmental groups determined to turn our state into one big national park,” Dunleavy said in a statement.

“A supplemental EIS only serves to void the results of the environmental study that was already completed and found that oil and gas development in the 1002 area of ANWR, an area set aside for oil and gas exploration, can take place without harming the environment,” the governor said.

The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act that created the 19-million-acre Arctic refuge designated a 1.6-million-acre area of ANWR’s northern coastal plain for further study of its oil and gas potential but left to Congress the decision to conduct lease sales and open the area for exploration.

In 2019 Congress included authorization for leasing in a tax reform act. A lease sale was held last January in the closing days of the Trump administration, and nine leases were sold with seven granted to a state agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. Two leases were sold to private companies.

Feige said a revised Environmental Impact Statement would likely lead to restrictions on the existing leases as well as to a second ANWR lease sale required in the 2019 congressional act.

“DOI (Department of the Interior) called out the 2,000-acre disturbance limit as well as areas considered ‘sensitive’ as possible changes coming in an SEIS. I believe the intent is to stop of severely limit activity on existing leases,” the commissioner said in an email.

In an analysis of Interior’s announcement, the Washington, D.C.-based policy group Real Clear View said it was likely that the Biden administration would conclude that greenhouse gas emissions caused by ANWR leasing would be greater than those assumed in the Trump analysis, which forecast “negligible” increases in carbon dioxide and other emissions.

“At the risk of understatement, we do not anticipate a conclusion that favors widespread oil and gas development in ANWR,” in the SEIS, the group concluded.

Exploration in the coastal plain of ANWR has been a political hot button for years within Congress, with national conservation groups opposed to exploration and leasing and Alaska’s influential congressional delegation strongly in favor.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the primary architect of the provision in federal legislation that finally approved leasing, but it was attached to a tax reform measure that could be passed by a majority vote in the U.S. Senate.

In most previous attempts the need to obtain 60 Senate votes to avoid a filibuster was a high hurdle, although there was one previous initiative that passed attached to a budget bill. It was subsequently vetoed by then-President Bill Clinton, however.