The Biden administration is moving ahead with the smallest possible oil and gas lease sale controversially mandated to take place in a wildlife refuge.
The Bureau of Land Management is required to auction off opportunities to drill in the Alaska wildlife refuge by the end of this year under 2017’s Tax Cuts and Job Act.
Many Democrats have opposed drilling for oil there, and the Biden administration now says that it will only auction off the minimum 400,000 acres required under the law.
The rights to drill in the refuge will be auctioned off on Jan 9 — just 11 days before President-elect Trump takes office.
The lease sale will be the second one required by the law. The Trump administration carried out the first in 2021, though amid significant activist pushback against drilling in the refuge, there was very little interest in actually drilling there the first time that rights to drill were offered.
The few drilling leases that were issued at the time were later suspended by the Biden administration, which cited “multiple legal deficiencies.”
In its new decision the Biden administration also said it is limiting the sale to the places with the highest potential for oil and gas discovery.
It additionally does not offer up drilling in polar bear denning and migratory bird nesting areas — and seeks to protect other species such as caribou and porcupines.
The Arctic refuge is home to grizzly bears, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou and more than 200 species of birds and contains land considered sacred by the Gwich’in people.
