Trump administration reveals plans to open protected Arctic land to oil and gas development

The Trump administration has revealed details of a controversial plan to open up a pristine, protected area of the Arctic - a refuge for polar bears and Native Alaskans – to oil and gas development.

In a move that marked a significant step forward in its efforts to establish fossil fuel extraction in in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the government published a draft report of an environmental impact assessment.

The report says exploitation of the area, which Republicans have been seeking since the 1970s, would have the potential to impact everything from indigenous hunters and wildlife, to air and water quality. It also says there is the impact from increased greenhouse gas emissions from exploration and development.

Despite this, the interior ministry has said opening the refuge is the way for the country to go. In a statement, outgoing interior secretary Ryan Zinke called the move necessary.

“An energy-dominant America starts with an energy-dominant Alaska, and among the scores of accomplishments we have had at Interior under President Donald J Trump, taking these steps towards opening the 1002 section of Alaska’s North Slope stands out among the most impactful towards bolstering America’s economic strength and security,” he said.

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“For decades, Alaskans on both sides of the aisle have overwhelmingly supported opening the 1002 to energy exploration and development. I commend the president for giving Alaskans a voice again in how their public lands are used.”

Supporters of the measure says it has considerable backing among Alaskans. Yet environmentalists have strongly condemned the proposal, which includes four different options.

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“There’s no precedent for anything done this quickly for an environmental review of this scale,” Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, told the Washington Post. “This is really a rubber-stamp exercise rather than an effort to mitigate the impact to wildlife on the coastal plain.”

Barack Obama resisted industry efforts to open up the refuge. For more than 40 years, oil companies have produced 13bn barrels of crude oil from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. The Post said any new production on the state’s North Slope could be hooked up to existing pipelines.It has been almost a year since a provision to open 1.6m acres of the 19.3 million acre ANWR was slipped into the 2017 tax bill.

“We’re going to start drilling in ANWR, one of the largest oil reserves in the world, that for 40 years this country was unable to touch. That by itself would be a massive bill,” the president said at the time.

Environmentalists immediately seized on what Republicans had done.

“Within the state of Alaska, some communities whose cultures and livelihoods are tied to the ecological health of the coastal plain have expressed their grave concern that whatever short-term economic gains there are to be had from its exploration and development will be negated by the disruption of the area’s fragile ecosystem,” wrote Jeff Turrentine of the National Resources Defence Council.