ANWR on the auction block

January 06, 2021

With help from Ben Lefebvre, Annie Snider, Zack Colman and Eric Wolff

ANWR ON THE AUCTION BLOCK: The Trump administration today will offer millions of acres of untouched Alaska wilderness to oil companies, but its fulfillment of a long-time wish of state lawmakers is threatening to become a colossal flop. The lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — which is proceeding after one of the last-ditch efforts to halt the auction failed Tuesday night — is the culmination of more than three years of work that kicked off with provisions that Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski helped shepherd into the 2017 tax law. When President Donald Trump signed the legislation requiring the Interior Department to offer lease sales in ANWR, he bragged that opening the wilderness to drilling was "a big deal that Ronald Reagan couldn't get done."

But the oil market has come a long way from the Reagan years, when demand for Alaskan oil production was at its peak. More recently, the state has experienced an exodus of oil companies lured by cheaper operations in the Lower 48, and the Biden administration and environmental groups have promised to make legal life difficult for those who sign on to drill in ANWR. Suitors may be so scarce that the Alaska government voted just before Christmas to put up $20 million of its own money to bid on ANWR leases. "All of this is such a mess," said Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior public lands policy analyst at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, which opposed drilling in ANWR. "There's already four lawsuits on the lease sale. Even if there are leases sold, it's not forgone that there will be any development."

Far from opening ANWR to decades of drilling, Trump and Murkowski may have helped convince Congress to permanently close the area to development, said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) last year penned a bill that would permanently block drilling in ANWR. Congress could also include language stripping the ANWR provisions from the 2017 tax law in a budget reconciliation package, Huffman said. "I think it's been doomed from the beginning," Huffman said of plans to open ANWR. "This was never a broadly popular provision. They're not going to get the drilling and they've totally made the case for permanent protection." ME is curious if such language would get past the Senate, where Murkowski would be a key vote.


By:  Kelsey Tamborrino
Source: Politico: Morning Energy