New ANWR environmental study could block development of Alaska state-held oil leases

Anchorage — Alaska officials are reacting strongly to the US Interior Department's plan to reopen the Trump administration's 2019 final environmental impact statement on oil and natural gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The FEIS cleared the way for a January lease sale in the refuge by the federal Bureau of Land Management in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Corri Feige, Alaska's commissioner of natural resources, said Aug. 4 the plan for a supplemental EIS, "is clearly a move to change the outcome of the 2020 Record of Decision" in favor of leasing.

Biden's Interior Department Aug. 2 cited deficiencies and errors in a June decision to pause approvals of leasing activities in ANWR, also setting the stage for the new environmental review, but Feige said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has yet to identify problems in the 2020 environmental analysis.

"They're simply redoing the process to change the outcome," she said.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy had stronger words: "This is another example of the Biden Administration attempting to shut down Alaska's primary industry to appease radical environmental groups determined to turn our state into one big national park. A supplemental EIS only serves to void the results of the environmental study that was already completed and found that oil and gas development in the 1002 area of ANWR, an area set aside for oil and gas exploration, can take place without harming the environment," he said late Aug. 3.

The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act that created the 19 million-acre Arctic refuge designated a 1.6 million-acre area of ANWR's northern coastal plain for further study of its oil and gas potential but left to Congress the decision to conduct lease sales and open the area for exploration.

In 2019, Congress included authorization for leasing in a tax reform act. A lease sale was held last January in the closing days of the Trump administration, with nine leases sold with seven granted to the state Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and two leases to private companies.

Feige, the state resources commissioner, said a revised EIS would likely lead to restrictions on the existing leases as well as to a second ANWR lease sale required in the 2019 congressional act.

The state of Alaska itself owns seven of nine leases sold in an ANWR lease sale last January.

Interior "called out the 2,000-acre disturbance limit as well as areas considered 'sensitive' as possible changes coming in an SEIS. I believe the intent is to stop of severely limit activity on existing leases," Feige said in an email.

POLITICAL HOT BUTTON

In an analysis of Interior's announcement, Washington-based ClearView Energy Partners said it was likely that the Biden administration would conclude that greenhouse gas emissions caused by ANWR leasing would be greater than those assumed in the Trump analysis, which forecast "negligible" increases.

"At the risk of understatement, we do not anticipate a conclusion that favors widespread oil and gas development in ANWR," the group said Aug. 3 about the supplemental EIS.

Exploration in the coastal plain of ANWR has been a political hot button for years within Congress, with national conservation groups opposed to exploration and leasing and Alaska's influential congressional delegation strongly in favor.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, like Dunleavy a Republican, was the primary architect of the provision in federal legislation that finally approved leasing, but it was attached to a tax reform measure that could be passed by a majority vote in the Senate.

In most previous attempts the need to obtain 60 Senate votes to avoid a filibuster was a high hurdle, although one previous initiative passed attached to a budget bill. It was subsequently vetoed by then-President Bill Clinton.