TCC
Well-known
The Trump administration is preparing to allow oil and gas leasing across the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, a wilderness landscape that has been protected for more than four decades, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.
The announcement, which is expected from the Interior Department later this month but may be delayed due to the government shutdown, is the latest move by the administration to ramp up U.S. fossil fuel production and would fulfill a promise President Donald Trump made during his first term to advance drilling in the 1.56-million-acre expanse of tundra on Alaska’s North Slope. And it would be the latest in a nearly decadelong regulatory back-and-forth over the prospect of drilling in the wildlife refuge that Trump first ordered in 2017 but that was later halted by President Joe Biden.
