Trump administration opens millions more acres of Alaska to drilling – “A last-minute and irresponsible effort to open an enormous amount of land in a sensitive area”

By Dino Grandoni
5 January 2021

(The Washington Post) – The Trump administration, in its final days, decided to open millions more acres of land in the Alaskan Arctic to oil and gas drilling.

The decision from the Bureau of Land Management on Monday, finalized just two weeks before President Trump is set to leave office, will allow for fossil fuel extraction from 18.6 million acres in Alaska’s North Slope along the Arctic Ocean — a remote area roughly the size of West Virginia. 

The last-minute move in the Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve is one of his administration’s biggest efforts to expand oil and gas drilling given the sheer size of the acreage involved. […]

But several environmental and tribal groups warn that expanding drilling in the northern reaches of Alaska will potentially imperil wildlife and the Native Alaskans who hunt caribou for sustenance.

And it is especially wrongheaded, they say, at a time when the world is dangerously warming because of the burning of oil and gas. The northern reaches of Alaska, much of the rest of the Arctic, is one of the fastest-heating areas on the globe. […]

Jeremy Lieb, attorney for Earthjustice based in Anchorage, called the plan a “last-minute and irresponsible effort to open an enormous amount of land in a sensitive area.” [more]

Trump administration opens millions more acres of Alaska to drilling