The Biden administration took a key step towards holding a required sale of oil and gas leases in an Alaska wildlife refuge with the publication of a final environmental review, the Interior Department said on Wednesday.
The analysis outlined a preferred scenario under which the agency would offer 400,000 acres to drillers, the minimum allowed under a 2017 law that mandated oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — including one by the end of 2024.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s Interior Department set the analysis in motion in 2021, a few months after the administration of former President Donald Trump sold oil and gas leases in the refuge in the waning days of his administration.
The agency in 2023 then canceled the leases issued at the Trump sale, citing a flawed environmental analysis.
Biden had pledged to protect the 19.6 million-acre (7.9 million hectare) refuge for species including polar bears and caribou.
The new environmental document was published the day after Trump defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, in the presidential election.
The Interior department will issue a decision no sooner than 30 days after the environmental review’s publication. A lease sale would be planned following that decision.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom, editing by Deepa Babington)