Arctic Refuge drilling controversy
[1] As of 2017, Republicans have attempted to allow drilling in ANWR almost fifty times, finally being successful with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
[4] Section 1002 of that act deferred a decision on the management of oil and gas exploration and development of 1.5 million acres (610,000 ha) in the coastal plain, known as the "1002 area".
[6][7] In their documentary Being Caribou the Porcupine herd was followed in its yearly migration by author and wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer and filmmaker Leanne Allison to provide a broader understanding of what is at stake if the oil drilling should happen and educating the public.
Although there have been complaints from employees within the Department of the Interior,[citation needed] the reports remain the central evidence for those who argue that the drilling operation will not have a detrimental impact on local wildlife.
On President Joe Biden's first day in Office, he issued an executive order for a temporary moratorium on drilling activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
[8][9] On June 1, 2021, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland suspended all Trump-era oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending a review of how fossil fuel drilling would impact the remote landscape.
Backed by President Jimmy Carter, and sponsored by Morris K. Udall and John B. Anderson, the bill would have prohibited all commercial activity in 67 million acres (270,000 km2) designated as wilderness areas.
Morris Udall, chairman of the House Interior Committee, said he would reintroduce legislation to turn the entire coastal plain into a wilderness area, effectively giving the refuge permanent protection from development.
[22] On July 17, 1987, the United States and the Canadian government signed the "Agreement on the Conservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd," a treaty designed to protect the species from damage to its habitat and migration routes.
[24] This focus on the Porcupine caribou led to the animal becoming a visual rhetoric or symbol of the drilling issue much in the same way the polar bear has become the image of global warming.
[25] In March 1989, a bill permitting drilling in the reserve was "sailing through the Senate and had been expected to come up for a vote"[26] when the Exxon Valdez oil spill delayed and ultimately derailed the process.
[34][35] In 2001, Time's Douglas C. Waller said the Arctic Refuge drilling issue has been used by both Democrats and Republicans as a political device, especially through contentious election cycles.
[39] On December 15, 2005, Republican Alaska Senator Ted Stevens attached an Arctic Refuge drilling amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill.
[40] On June 18, 2008, President George W. Bush pressed Congress to reverse the ban on offshore drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in addition to approving the extraction of oil from shale on federal lands.
The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management BLM filed a final environmental impact statement and planned to start granting leases by the end of 2019.
Fish and Wildlife Service said the BLM's final statement underestimated the climate impacts of the oil leases because they viewed global warming as cyclical rather than human-made.
The administration's plan calls for "the construction of as many as four places for airstrips and well pads, 175 miles of roads, vertical supports for pipelines, a seawater-treatment plant and a barge landing and storage site.
"[47][48] On August 17, 2020, the Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt announced that the required reviews were complete and oil and gas drilling leases in the ANWR's coastal plain could now be put up for auction.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and other banks stated they would not finance drilling in the ANWR, after a public outcry in support of the native Gwichʼin people and against the potential impact it would have on climate change.
[55] On June 1, 2021, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland suspended all Trump-era oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending a review of how fossil fuel drilling would impact the remote landscape.
[11] On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the protected wildlife refuge will be open for gas and oil exploration.
"[57] President Donald Trump said that he had little interest in drilling in the Arctic Refuge until a friend "who's in that world and in that business" called and told him Republicans have been trying to do so for decades — so he had it included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
[28][29] "Environmentalists and most congressional Democrats have resisted drilling in the area because the required network of oil platforms, pipelines, roads and support facilities, not to mention the threat of foul spills, would play havoc on wildlife.
Here lies an unusually diverse assemblage of large animals and smaller, less-appreciated life forms, tied to their physical environments and to each other by natural, undisturbed ecological and evolutionary processes.
[76] In March 2005, Luci Beach, the executive director of the steering committee for the Native Alaskan and Canadian Gwich'in tribe (a member of the AI-TC), during a trip to Washington D.C., while speaking for a unified group of 55 Alaskan and Canadian indigenous peoples, said that drilling in ANWR is "a human rights issue and it's a basic Aboriginal human rights issue".
[77][78] The Gwich'in tribe adamantly believes that drilling in ANWR would have serious negative effects on the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd that they partially rely on for food.
[80] The Inupiat from Point Hope, Alaska recently passed resolutions[81] recognizing that drilling in ANWR would allow resource exploitation in other wilderness areas.
In May 2006, a resolution was passed in the village of Kaktovik calling Shell Oil Company "a hostile and dangerous force" that authorized the mayor to take legal and other actions necessary to "defend the community".
[82] The resolution also calls on all North Slope communities to oppose Shell owned offshore leases unrelated to the ANWR controversy until the company becomes more respectful of the people.
[83] Mayor Sonsalla says Shell has failed to work with the villagers on how the company would protect bowhead whales, which are part of Native culture, subsistence life, and diet.
