According to reporting by The Washington Post, the Trump administration is in a race against time, pushing oil and gas firms to choose areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where they want to develop and drill before President-elect Biden takes office on January 20 Inauguration Day.
Companies will have the opportunity to “call for nominations” or bid and identify where on the public land they'd like to log, mine, and graze. This Tuesday the “call for nominations” will open for a lease sale on the refuge’s 1.6 million acre coastal plain, home to tens of thousands of caribou, along with polar bears, waterfowl, and Arctic foxes.
In 2017, the GOP-controlled Congress authorized the drilling.
“Receiving input from industry on which tracts to make available for leasing is vital in conducting a successful lease sale,” Chad Padgett, the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska state director, said in a statement. “This call for nominations brings us one step closer to holding a historic first Coastal Plain lease sale, satisfying the directive of Congress in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and advancing this administration’s policy of energy independence.”
Once the “call for nominations” is published Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management will hold a 30-day comment period. When the period ends, the agency could publish all lease sale notices for an additional 30 days prior to an auction.
In four separate lawsuits environment groups are challenging the administration, and according to the Post, if one of those suits wins, the lease sales could become null and void.