Alaska sues Biden administration over restrictions on arctic oil, gas development

The state of Alaska on Wednesday sued the Biden administration over restrictions the federal government imposed in December on oil and gas leases in the Arctic set for auction this week.

The lawsuit alleges the restrictions, issued in December by the Interior Department, violate the provisions of the 2017 tax reform package that mandates the sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Biden administration announced the sale would cover the smallest possible acreage allowed under the law, 400,000 acres.

The state’s lawsuit argued that the administration’s restrictions in the refuge’s coastal plain would make the acreage “impossible or impracticable to develop.” The filing asks the U.S. District Court in Alaska to toss the December restrictions and bar the Interior Department from issuing the leases in question at auction.

“Congress did not authorize a new direction for ANWR. President Biden’s Administration ignored the law and took this unlawful detour without even presenting their final decision to the public for comment,” Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor (R) saif in a statement.

“We challenged the unprecedented cancellation of validly-executed leases after the first sale, and we’ll take on this fight as well," Taylor added.

The announcement of the lawsuit came shortly before the Interior Department announced it had received no bids for the lease sale before Monday’s deadline. The first of the sales mandated under the 2017 law, held under the Trump administration, yielded $14.4 million in bids, a fraction of the $2 billion the two lease sales were projected to generate.

“The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere; we’d suggest that’s a prudent place to start, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the world,” acting Interior Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said in a statement.

Two high bidders withdrew from the area in 2022, while the administration canceled seven leases previously issued to Alaska’s Industrial Development and Export Authority the following year.

While the state and its congressional delegation have frequently clashed with the Biden administration on fossil fuel development, the administration approved the Willow Project, a massive Arctic oil development project, after intense lobbying from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak).

An Interior Department spokesperson told The Hill the department does not comment on litigation but referred back to the announcement about the lack of bids.

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