President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas production, mining and logging in Alaska is being welcomed by the state’s political leaders, who see the development of new fossil fuels as crucial to Alaska’s economic future, and by Environmental groups have criticized the proposals as worrying the face of a warming climate.
The order, signed Monday, the first day of Trump’s inauguration, is consistent with a wish list submitted by Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy shortly after Trump’s election. The goals include opening an area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, considered sacred to the Gwich’in indigenous people, to oil and gas drilling and addressing restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on drilling activities in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lifting the North Slope and reversing restrictions on logging and road construction in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.
In many ways, the order aims to return to the policies that were in place during Trump’s first term.
But Trump “just can’t wave a magic wand and make these things happen,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Environmental laws and regulations must be followed to untangle existing policies, and legal challenges to Trump’s plans are all but certain, he said.
“We are ready and looking forward to the fight of our lives to keep Alaska great, wild and lush,” Freeman said.
What’s planned for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
The order seeks to reverse a decision by the Biden administration that terminated seven leases issued as part of the refuge’s first-ever oil and gas lease sale in the refuge’s coastal plain. Major oil companies did not participate in the sale, which took place in early 2021, in the final days of Trump’s first term. The leases went to a state corporation. Two small businesses that had also signed leases in this sale had previously abandoned them.
Trump’s order calls on the Secretary of the Interior to “initiate additional leasing actions” and issue any permits and facilitations necessary for oil and gas exploration and development. Gwich’in leaders oppose drilling in the coastal plain, citing the importance of drilling to the caribou herd on which they rely. Leaders of the Inupiaq community of Kaktovik, located within the refuge, support drilling and have expressed hope that their voices will be heard in the Trump administration after being frustrated by former President Joe Biden.
This comes weeks after no bids were received on a second lease purchase mandated by a 2017 federal law. The law required two lease sales to be offered by the end of 2024. The state sued the Interior Department and federal officials earlier this month, saying the terms of the recent sale were too restrictive.
What are Alaska’s political leaders saying?
Alaska leaders welcomed Trump’s order, titled “Unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.”
“It’s morning again in Alaska,” said Republican U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.
“President Trump delivered on his first day in office!” Dunleavy said on social media. “That’s why elections are important.”
Alaska has historically struggled against perceived federal government overreach that affects the state’s ability to develop its natural resources. State leaders complained during the Biden administration that efforts to advance oil, gas and minerals were being unfairly hampered, although they also scored a major victory with approval in 2023 of a major oil project called Willow in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Environmentalists are fighting this permit in court.
Dunleavy has repeatedly argued that developing Alaska’s vast resources is critical to Alaska’s future, and he has promoted underground carbon storage and carbon offset programs as a way to diversify revenue while also pursuing and pursuing oil, gas and coal of wood programs promised.
The state faces economic challenges: Oil production, long its lifeblood, is a fraction of what it once was, due in part to aging fields, and more people have left Alaska than come here for more than a decade have been drawn.
What happens now?
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities, called Trump’s order an “everything, everywhere, everything at once” order aimed at undoing measures that in some cases took the Biden administration years to implement .
“The time it would take for the Home Office to complete everything in this regulation is at least one term, maybe two. And even then, you would need science on your side if everything comes back. And we know. “Particularly in the case of Alaska, the science is not on the side of unlimited drilling,” he said, citing climate concerns and the warming Arctic.
Communities have felt the impacts of climate change, including thinning sea ice, coastal erosion and thawing permafrost that is undermining infrastructure.
Erik Grafe, an attorney with the group Earthjustice, called the Arctic “the worst place to expand oil and gas development. No place is good because we need to shrink and move to a green economy and address the climate crisis.”
