Trump administration moves ahead with drilling plan for Arctic Refuge
Caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Moe Witschard
Drilling could move ahead, but fight won't end here
The Trump administration has released a decision that officially opens the the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, just on the verge of the refuge’s 60th anniversary.
The Interior Department released its record of decision on the final environmental impact statement for the Arctic Refuge on Aug. 17., making oil and gas lease sales a possibility for later this year. The move would upend decades of protections for the refuge, protections that the environmental community and Alaska indigenous groups have fought hard for.
As provided in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that included a controversial provision to eliminate six decades of bipartisan protection of the Arctic Refuge, the administration intends to sell leases on the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the refuge before the potential departure of President Trump in January.
After five of America’s six largest banks have announced that they will no longer finance new oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge—and under the cover of a global public health crisis and economic turmoil—the BLM has issued a bad record of decision resulting from a fundamentally flawed final environmental impact statement, said Karlin Itchoak, Alaska state director for The Wilderness Society.
“The FEIS offered only alternatives that would result in destructive, widespread development on the sacred calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The Gwich’in and Iñupiat people who depend on the herd for their survival—and all of us—deserve better.
“The financial industry is sending a loud, clear message to industry: Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is bad business, and it would take the United States—and the rest of the world—in the wrong direction as we confront the crisis of climate change.”
