The Biden-Harris administration finalized a decision to block oil and gas development across 28 million acres of public lands in Alaska, reversing a slate of actions taken in the final days of the Trump administration.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a statement Tuesday, confirming that she would formally revoke five public land orders that the agency's then-secretary David Bernhardt signed in January 2021. Those orders removed decades-old restrictions on the massive area, instead returning it to federal multiple-use status and, as a result, allowing the government to open the land up for uses such as recreation, grazing, timber harvesting, mining, and energy development.
The restrictions ultimately preserved in the Interior Department's announcement date back to the 1970s and lock the land up for the foreseeable future. Because the Trump administration's January 2021 actions would have reopened the land, Haaland's actions effectively serve as a land withdrawal and are part of the current administration's broader climate agenda cracking down on oil and gas development.
The Trump-era actions would have expanded allowable uses in the Bay, Bering Sea-Western Interior, East Alaska, Kobuk-Seward Peninsula, and Ring of Fire federal planning areas. But the actions were never fully enforced.
In February 2021, shortly after taking office, the Biden-Harris administration postponed Bernhardt's revocation of the public land orders.
The Bureau of Land Management was then tasked with assembling an environmental impact statement assessing the federal government's options on the issue. The Interior Department subagency published its final environmental impact statement in early July, recommending that Haaland outright reject the Trump-era orders and maintain restrictions across the 28 million acres of Alaskan land in question.
"With this action, the Biden administration has wasted an opportunity to do right by Alaska by refusing to lift a single acre of a single [public land order] anywhere in our state, instead keeping all of these lands in a restricted status," Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.) said at the time. "This wouldn’t be acceptable in any other state, but this administration is once again treating Alaska differently—and far worse—than states in the Lower 48."
Fellow Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R.) added that the recommendations showed their state was "under attack" by the Biden-Harris administration. Murkowski and Sullivan have called for the land to be opened for multiple uses and for some of it to be transferred to the state government for management.
"Continuing these essential protections, which have been in place for decades, will ensure continued access and use of these public lands now and in the future," Haaland said in a statement Tuesday, adding that the action was taken after consulting Native American tribes.
In addition to the actions finalized Tuesday, the administration has blocked energy development and instituted strict environmental rules governing nearly 70 million acres of public land, mainly targeting Alaska. Most recently, on Earth Day this year, President Biden ordered the Interior Department to lock up 13 million acres of land within Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.
The administration has pursued land restrictions after its attempt to wholesale block all new federal fossil fuel leasing failed judicial review.
After taking office in January 2021, Biden issued a moratorium on all new fossil fuel leasing. A federal court then struck the moratorium down as illegal months later, and an appeals court eventually killed it for good.
The court rulings forced the administration to continue the federal oil and gas leasing program, but it has done so by blocking off large swaths of land from development and issuing new restrictions on leased land. For example, the Interior Department hiked royalty fees on fossil fuel producers and has refused to hold onshore lease sales on a quarterly basis, a decision that has been subject to industry lawsuits.
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