Another Giveaway to Big Oil as Trump Wrenches Open 13 Million Acres of Arctic for Drilling

The Trump administration on Thursday killed Biden-era rules that protected around 13 million acres of the western Arctic from fossil fuel drilling, another giveaway to the industry that helped bankroll the president's campaign.

The decision by the US Interior Department, led by billionaire fossil fuel industry ally Doug Burgum, targets the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). Last year, the Biden administration finalized rules that shielded more than half of the 23-million-acre NPR-A from drilling.

Conservationists were quick to condemn the repeal of the rules as a move that prioritizes the profits of oil and gas corporations over wildlife, pristine land, and the climate.

Monica Scherer, senior director of campaigns at Alaska Wilderness League, ripped the administration for ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who engaged in the public comment process and spoke out against the gutting of NPR-A protections.

“Today’s actions make one thing painfully clear: this administration never had any intention of listening to the American people," Scherer said Thursday. "By dismantling these protections, Interior isn’t ‘restoring common sense,’ it’s sidelining science and traditional knowledge, silencing communities, and putting irreplaceable lands and wildlife at risk."

Earthjustice attorney Erik Grafe called the administration's weakening of Arctic protections "another example of how the Trump administration is trying to take us back in time with its reckless fossil fuels agenda."

"This would sweep aside common-sense regulations aimed at more responsibly managing the Western Arctic’s irreplaceable lands and wildlife for future generations," said Grafe. "It rewinds the clock to regulations last updated in 1977. This is no way to secure our future.”

"Where others see the most ecologically intact landscape in the United States, the Interior Department sees another American treasure poised for ruination."

Thursday's move came less than a month after the Trump administration announced plans to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At the time, Burgum declared, "Alaska is open for business."

ConocoPhillips, the oil and gas giant behind the much-decried Willow project that the Biden administration approved in 2023, is among the possible beneficiaries of the Trump Interior Department's decision to roll back drilling protections in the western Arctic.

Inside Climate News reported earlier this week that ConocoPhillips "has applied to extend ice roads and well pads farther west into the Arctic wilderness beyond its Willow oil project."

"The company also wants to build roads to the south of Willow, where it would use heavy-duty equipment to thump the ground with seismic testing searching for crude," the outlet added.

Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Thursday that the Trump administration's latest attack on Arctic protections "is nothing more than a giveaway to the oil and gas industry."

"Weakening protections is reckless, and it threatens to erase the very landscapes Congress sought to safeguard," said McEnaney. "Where others see the most ecologically intact landscape in the United States, the Interior Department sees another American treasure poised for ruination.”