Dems seek to block ANWR drilling, vow reconciliation fight

A bipartisan bill would designate the Artic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness.

April 30, 2025

A bipartisan group of lawmakers reintroduced legislation Tuesday to permanently block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Republicans eye pushing new development in their party-line megabill.

The “Arctic Refuge Protection Act” is led by Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). It would designate ANWR as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System, barring any new oil and gas leasing, exploration and development, while maintaining indigenous subsistence rights.

“There are some places too special and too amazing and too ecologically and culturally significant to allow them to be permanently despoiled by oil and gas,” Huffman, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said at a Capitol Hill press conference rolling out the bill.

“After all of these decades of being a political football, … we gotta permanently designate it as the wilderness that it is and permanently protect it as such.”

The bill has no likely path to becoming law in this GOP-controlled Congress. And even though Fitzpatrick often sides with Democrats on environmental matters, it's unlikely he would tank his party's priority bill over ANWR.

Democrats are pouncing on the issue as Republicans eye new leasing to help pay for part of their sprawling budget reconciliation package to cut taxes, increase energy production and bolster the southern border.

ANWR was opened for leasing by Republicans in a 2017 reconciliation bill to cut taxes, with Republicans promising it would raise more than $1 billion in revenues. Fitpatrick supported the legislation. But the leases flopped, with the first bringing in only about $14 million in federal revenues and the second receiving no bids at all.

Republicans have blamed the flop on former President Joe Biden and remain interested in the area. The refuge also remains the apple of President Donald Trump’s eye; he name-dropped it at a rally Tuesday to commemorate his first 100 days.

“We’ve reopened ANWR, the greatest drilling site anywhere in the world in Alaska and implemented the new energy policy of the United States … drill, baby, drill,” Trump said.

Huffman and Markey, however, suggested the disappointing lease sales in ANWR left Democrats an opening should Republicans pursue it again this year. The Natural Resources Committee will mark up its portion of the bill next week.

“They fooled us once; this time, we are onto them,” Huffman said. “We are going to spotlight the way that America has been misled.”

Markey noted that oil companies have shown little interest in buying leases in the area.

“It’s simply bad business, even Big Oil knows that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a bad idea,” Markey said.

Even with AMWR drilling popular among most Republicans, some fiscal hawks are getting antsy about offsetting the cost of planned tax cuts and spending in reconciliation.

“I just want people to do math,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), when asked by reporters about pay-fors for the megabill, though not about ANWR specifically. “They love extending their tax cuts and then saying, ‘Oh, but don’t worry, the math will all just work out, wink-wink.’”

“I’ll take whatever cut I can get, but then don’t try and sell me the tax numbers when they don’t add up,” Roy said.


By:  Garrett Downs
Source: E&E News by Politico