Trump targets Alaska's oil and other resources as environmentalists gear up for a fight

[January 22, 2025]  By BECKY BOHRER

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump's expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaska's economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate.

The order, signed on Trump's first day in office Monday, is consistent with a wish list submitted by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy shortly after Trump's election. It seeks, among other things, to open to oil and gas drilling an area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge considered sacred to the Indigenous Gwich'in, undo limits imposed by the Biden administration on drilling activity in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope and reverse restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.

In many ways, the order seeks to revert to policies that were in place during Trump's first term.

But Trump “just can't wave a magic wand and make these things happen,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Environmental laws and rules must be followed in attempts to unravel existing policies, and legal challenges to Trump's plans are virtually certain, he said.

“We’re ready and looking forward to the fight of our lives to keep Alaska great, wild and abundant,” Freeman said.

What's planned for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

The order seeks to reverse a Biden administration decision canceling seven leases issued as part of the first-ever oil and gas lease sale in the refuge's coastal plain. Major oil companies didn't participate in the sale, held in early 2021 in the waning days of Trump's first term. The leases went to a state corporation. Two small companies that also won leases in that sale had earlier given them up.

Trump's order calls for the Interior secretary to “initiate additional leasing” and issue all permits and easements necessary for oil and gas exploration and development to occur. Gwich’in leaders oppose drilling on the coastal plain, citing its importance to a caribou herd they rely upon. Leaders of the Iñupiaq community of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, support drilling and have expressed hope their voices will be heard in the Trump administration after being frustrated by former President Joe Biden.

This comes weeks after a second lease sale, mandated by a 2017 federal law, yielded no bids. The law required that two lease sales be offered by the end of 2024. The state earlier this month sued the Interior Department and federal officials, alleging among other things that the terms of the recent sale were too restrictive.

The snow-covered coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is seen, with the Brooks Range at right, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

What do Alaska political leaders say?

Alaska leaders cheered Trump's order, which was titled, “Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential.”

“It is morning again in Alaska,” Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan declared.

“President Trump delivered on his first day in office!” Dunleavy said on social media. “This is why elections matter.”

Alaska has a history of fighting perceived overreach by the federal government that affects the state's ability to develop its natural resources. State leaders complained during the Biden administration that efforts to further develop oil, gas and minerals were being unfairly hampered, though they also scored a major win with the approval in 2023 of a large oil project known as Willow in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Environmentalists are fighting that approval in court.

Dunleavy has repeatedly argued that development of Alaska's vast resources are critical for its future, and he's billed the underground storage of carbon and carbon offset programs as a way to diversify revenues while continuing to develop oil, gas and coal and pursue timber programs.

The state faces economic challenges: oil production, long its lifeblood, is a fraction of what it once was, in part due to aging fields, and for more than a decade, more people have left Alaska than have moved here.

What happens now?

Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities, called Trump's order an “everything, everywhere, all-at-once order” that seeks to undo measures that in some cases it took the Biden administration years to enact.

“The length of time it would take the Interior Department to accomplish everything in that executive order is at least one term’s worth, maybe two. And even then, you would need the science on your side when it all comes back. And we know in the case of Alaska specifically, the science is not on the side of unlimited drilling," he said, pointing to climate concerns and the warming Arctic.

Communities have experienced the impacts of climate change, including thinning sea ice, coastal erosion and thawing permafrost that undermines infrastructure.

Erik Grafe, an attorney with the group Earthjustice, called the Arctic “the worst place to be expanding oil and gas development. No place is good because we need to be contracting and moving to a green economy and addressing the climate crisis.”

All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved