With a Senate’s budget vote last year, the fight over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) had commenced, and moving forward, it is expected to remain quite bitter. While the budget, which states that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expect to raise $1 billion in revenue, doesn’t officially say the revenue should come from drilling in or off the coast of the refuge, most agreed that that would be the easiest way to fund it.
According to environmental groups, this suspicion was confirmed on Thursday when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management opened a 30-day comment period seeking solicitations of interest for leases within the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s coast.
It is no secret that oil firms have been itching to get their hands on the ANWR and its surrounding sea, but leases in the area have not stuck. Proponents of drilling in ANWR argue that doing so would create much needed jobs in Alaska, a state which relies heavily on the oil and energy sector.
However, environmental groups have pushed back hard, claiming that drilling will harm the protected wildlife, and that the region is already struggling under climate change. Further, they say a major oil spill would be devastating for wildlife and the Alaska Native villages that fish in the sea. The groups also accuse oil companies of failing to demonstrate that they are capable of cleaning a spill in water covered by ice.
Under the Obama administration, a five-year drilling plan was created and most Arctic waters were left out of it, and environmental groups have sued in the effort to retain this permanent withdrawal, as the law makes no provision to reopen areas withdrawn by a president.
The Trump administration filed a motion to toss the lawsuit, but was rejected last week. However, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Alaska spokesman, John Callahan, announced last Thursday that the newly drafted five-year plan, which includes 19 possible sales off Alaska, is expected to be final by 2019.
For environmental groups, it is clear that the solicitations for interest in a Beaufort lease indicates that the Trump administration has made a decision to include Arctic waters in the new five-year plan.
According Miyoko Sakashita of the Center for Biological Diversity, it is just as clear that they will be met with fierce opposition. "Oil companies that want to drill in the Beaufort Sea will meet a wall of public and legal opposition," she said.
(Source: The Associated Press)
