Flying into Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on July 2, 2019.
Photo: Danielle Brigida/USFWSWho says American democracy is hard? It only took 30 years to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, and on Monday the Interior Department opened the largely barren acreage to oil leases.
Congress created ANWR way back in 1980 with a mandate to study its potential for oil and gas. In the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Republican House and Senate finally mandated that the federal government establish a plan for energy development. The environmental lobby opposed any drilling, but native communities in the region and Alaskans have long supported it as an economic boon with little risk to the land or grazing caribou of popular nature photography.
Some 92% of ANWR will remain untouched under the Interior plan, and the rest should be protected with extensive drilling protocols. Accidents can happen, but the leases and drilling could provide thousands of new jobs and revenue for Alaska and the federal government. The U.S. Geological Survey believes the ANWR coastal plan is the largest source of onshore oil reserves in North America. Alaskans are especially pleased because the flow of oil from current drilling sites is slowing down, and the pipeline to the lower 48 states needs new supplies. Alaskans also count on royalties from oil drilling for their state and personal coffers.
Credit goes to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt for pushing through the plan so lease auctions can begin before the end of the year. That means they can’t easily be rolled back by the next Administration if Joe Biden wins the election.
Not that he and a Democratic Congress wouldn’t try. The politics of climate change is fraught and polarized these days, and the new default on the left is to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. A Biden White House would be under enormous pressure to introduce regulatory and other obstacles.
That would be a shame because, barring some technological breakthrough, America will need oil and gas for electric power and transportation for decades to come. Might as well let Americans benefit from producing it.
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