|
Yesterday the Trump administration auctioned off oil and gas leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, following through on what was meant to be a major gift to the oil and gas industry. But it turns out that Big Oil wasn't interested.
The oil and gas industry largely ignored the long-awaited lease sale, leaving an Alaska state agency as the main bidder. The agency put up all but two of the winning bids, which were made by small oil and gas companies. Only eleven tracts were sold, for a total of $14.4 million in revenue: far less than had originally been estimated. Nearly all of the ecologically valuable land was sold for the minimum price of $25 an acre.
Jenny Rowland-Shea, a senior policy analyst for public lands at the Center for American Progress, summed up the events by saying, “[The] lease sale was the logical conclusion to this completely flawed effort: a massive failure. The Trump administration has managed to rip off taxpayers, ignore the rights and voices of the Gwich’in and threaten polar bears and caribou, all to hand the coastal plain over to a couple of wildcatters and a state-owned corporation with no ability to drill.”
The lack of interest from the oil and gas industry was anticipated, even if unacknowledged by the Trump administration. Drilling in such a remote part of Alaska would have been inconvenient and expensive, not to mention toxic in the public eye. Many major banks also vowed not to finance such drilling, complicating any potential development efforts by an industry that faced a downward spiral over the course of 2020.
Although the refuge is important habitat for polar bears and migrating caribou and birds, representing one of the last large intact landscapes in the United States, President Trump has made opening the refuge a centerpiece of his failed energy dominance agenda. President-elect Biden has vowed to permanently protect the refuge. Although he has little power to revoke issued leases, the incoming administration does have a number of options for blocking permits that would be required to develop the region.
|
After years of promising a revenue and jobs bonanza they ended up throwing a party for themselves, with the state being one of the only bidders. We have long known that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic Refuge, the Gwich'in people don't want it, and now we know the oil industry doesn't want it either."
