Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Still at Risk from Oil Drilling

The decades-long battle to defend Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is likely to heat up again in the new year, as oil drilling in the remote landscape was named as an agenda item in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 initiative. Even before the incoming administration takes office, the Biden administration’s Department of Interior is expected to hold a lease sale in the Arctic Refuge. Today Interior released a Record of Decision and notice of the upcoming lease sale, paving the way for a lease sale to be held before the end of this year, as directed by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that opened the Refuge to oil leasing.

The 2017 Tax Act required Interior to hold two Arctic Refuge lease sales before the end of 2024; this will be the second. The first, held by the Trump administration in 2021, generated a mere one percent of the projected revenue promised to American taxpayers when Congress approved the leasing mandate. Few oil companies bid, since banks and insurance companies wary of the high risk refused to back drilling programs there. Although the volume of recoverable oil in the Refuge is unknown, climate scientists have warned for decades that extracting and burning any amount of oil will accelerate climate change consequences such as droughts, heat waves, wildfires and extreme storm events. Pumping oil from the Arctic Refuge won’t result in lower oil prices, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, and building the necessary infrastructure would take decades.

“Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward,” said Earthjustice attorney Erik Grafe, who has led litigation to protect the Refuge. “Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich’in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers. We’re committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction.”