The administration will cancel oil and gas leases in a federal wildlife refuge, ensuring “maximum protections” for nearly half of the petroleum reserve.
The Biden administration plans to impose a permanent ban on oil and gas development for 10.6 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, the nation’s largest expanse of public land. The proposal covers more than 40 percent of the reserve, home to a range of sensitive Arctic wildlife
In the middle of November 2029, the Trump administration advanced plans to auction drilling rights in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to block oil exploration in the rugged Alaska wilderness.
Well, as it turns out, the federal government’s first-ever sale of oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) raised a grand total of $14.4 million in bids, with the majority of the winning bids submitted by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority – owned by the state of Alaska.
It is those seven leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge issued to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority that have been canceled by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Reuters reports.
The thing is, while the move by the Biden administration will ensure “maximum protections” for nearly half of the petroleum reserve, it will not stop the enormous ConocoPhillips project, Willow oil, from drilling in the same vicinity that President Biden approved this year.
The $8 billion Willow Project has the potential to produce more than 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years. This means that burning all that oil could release nearly 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. On an annual basis, that would translate into 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year.
In a statement, the Interior Department said a new environmental review had determined that the analysis that underlies the agency’s 2021 lease sale was “seriously flawed,” giving Secretary Deb Haaland the authority to cancel the leases.
“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Haaland said in a press release.
