The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: What’s Happening with Oil and Gas Development in Alaska

In my first article for Novel Hand, I wrote about the importance of protecting the United States’ Public Lands from the threat of privatization. Recently, I’ve been reading article after article about the realization of these threats. In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has made a final push toward leasing the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to gas and oil companies, a move that would overturn six decades of protections for one of the world’s largest remaining expanses of wilderness.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Lowell Sumner, a pioneering biologist of the United States National Park Service, wrote of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, “Here still survives one of Planet Earth’s own works of art. This one symbolizes freedom: freedom to continue, unhindered and forever if we are willing, the particular story of Planet Earth unfolding here.”

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers 19.6 million acres of land and water in northeastern Alaska. The refuge, which is also the United States’ largest wildlife sanctuary, spans approximately the area of South Carolina. Here, there are no roads, trails, or developed campsites. Often called the “crown jewel” of our refuge system, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to over 270 species, including the Porcupine Caribou Herd, musk oxen, birds, and arctic foxes. The refuge is also a key denning habitat for polar bears and their cubs.

While the refuge protects wildlife and native species, it’s also sacred, protected land to the native Gwich’in people, who have migrated alongside the Porcupine Caribou Herd in this region for over 40,000 years. They depend on the Porcupine Caribou for 80% of their diet, and most members of the tribe rely on this land for their livelihoods. The tribe’s songs, dances, and stories are directed to the caribou and connect deeply and spiritually with the Alaskan landscape. The approximately 1.6 million acres of land that are currently being auctioned by the Trump administration encompass critical caribou calving ground. Should the land be purchased and developed by oil and gas companies in coming years, the entire Porcupine Caribou Herd, and thus the Gwich’in peoples’ way of life, would be irreparably damaged if not utterly destroyed.

Fossil Fuel Development and Its Impact

According to the Bureau of Land Management, an approximately 1.6-million acre area within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge along Alaska’s northern coast has been designated the “Coastal Plain” oil and gas program area. The Trump administration has long cast their attention on this expanse of untouched, vulnerable refuge land with the hopes of bolstering the United States’ domestic fossil fuel production and achieving “global energy dominance.” While some Alaskan lawmakers and energy firms support the push for fossil fuel development on public lands, citing an increase in jobs and subsequent economic growth, many public officials, environmentalists, and Alaska Native groups have been speaking out in strong opposition to the proposed bills.

Fossil fuel development on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would bring roads, construction, heavy machinery, airstrips, pollution, and overall disruption to essential protected lands. This would disrupt the fragile tundra ecosystem, age-old caribou and polar bear migration and denning patterns, and some of the planet’s last mass-preserved wildlife lands. The increase in fossil fuel development would also contribute to climate change at a crucial time when we should instead be turning our attention to clean, sustainable, and alternative approaches to energy production.

As of Tuesday, Nov. 17, the Bureau of Land Management officially posted a “Call for Nominations and Comments for the Coastal Plain Alaska Oil and Gas Lease Sale.” The call for nominations is essentially a request to oil and gas companies to specify which tracts of land they would be interested in potentially drilling. The call will cease on Dec. 17, and the earliest lease sales could take place on Jan. 17. Although, under normal circumstances, the bureau might take months to review the comments they receive, the timeline has been accelerated with the goal of solidifying leases before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Despite the Trump administration’s push toward fossil fuel development, it’s unclear how many companies will bid for rights to the land, and it’s also unclear whether the program will generate as much revenue as is currently estimated. Currently, five out of the United States’ six largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have announced that they will no longer finance drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It must also be taken into consideration that the latest seismic data reflecting the potential oil reserves beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was collected in the 1980’s, when available technology was far less refined than it is today, which could complicate gas and oil companies’ bids on the land.

Moving Forward with a New Administration

In “The Biden Plan for A Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice,” one of Biden’s key points declares his commitment to, “Protecting America’s natural treasures by permanently protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other areas impacted by President Trump’s attack on federal lands and waters” and “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters…”

In their Washington Post article, published just days ago, Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni emphasize the legal and political obstacles that Biden’s bold campaign pledge faces. Citing that the issue is “rife with conflicts” and “not perpetually legally sustainable,” the Washington Post reporters note that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, in a recent interview, said that “Biden would not be able to halt new drilling on public lands and waters until his first term ends.” In their article, Eilperin and Grandoni also quote Taylor McKinnon, a public-lands campaigner for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, who says of the Trump administration, “They’re trying to lock in as many leases and as much climate pollution as they can before the Biden administration takes control.”

In a recent NPR article, Andy Mack, a former commissioner with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, is quoted as saying that although the new administration could be bound by federal law mandating a lease sale by the end of 2021, it could still pose restrictions. He said, “What they would try to do is make it so difficult and so onerous to get the array of permits that the companies just say, ‘Well, we’re not going to spend 10 years just trying to get a simple permit, we’re going to put our money and our investment elsewhere.'”

The issue of fossil fuel development on protected lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is contentious and pressing, with the lives of countless threatened Arctic species, the existence of one of the largest expanses of protected wilderness, the livelihoods of Native American tribes, and the condition of the global climate at stake.

How You Can Make an Impact

Write to your senator by filling out the Wilderness Society’s “Protect the Arctic Refuge” email form, which urges government officials to support the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wilderness bill. The wilderness bill aims to declare the refuge’s coastal plain a designated wilderness area and prevent harmful fossil fuel development.
Draft, write, and submit an op-ed to your local or campus newspaper, introducing your community and peers to the issues surrounding public lands and gas and oil development.
Donate to the Gwich’in Steering Committee, a group of Gwich’in Chiefs and Elders who first gathered in 1988 “to protect the long-term health and viability of the Porcupine Caribou Herd which maintains the Gwich’in way of life.”
Tell President Trump and Interior Secretary Bernhardt you oppose the push for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by personalizing, filling out, and sending the National Resources Defense Council’s email form.
Donate to, join, or fundraise for the country’s oldest environmental group, the Sierra Club, which is currently supporting President-elect Biden and the new Congress with the hopes of “making our nation and our planet healthy and sustainable” and “campaigning tirelessly to stop anti-environmental efforts to derail everything we’ve achieved.”

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Regan Mies

Regan was a Writing and Research Intern in the fall of 2020 as a student at Columbia University.