Congress repeals policies that limited Arctic oil drilling

Taking another step in the current administration’s destructive campaign to sell out our national public lands for industrial profit, the U.S. House tonight  passed Congressional Review Act resolutions to repeal the Biden-era oil and gas leasing program for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Integrated Activity Plan that dictated management of the Western Arctic’s National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. 

The oil industry’s allies in Congress have criticized both plans for their inclusion of conservation measures and limits on drilling in the nation’s two largest tracts of public land and are taking steps to allow industry to develop and irreparably harm those lands without safeguards for wildlife, fish, or local subsistence needs. 

The Wilderness Society released the following statement from Alaska Senior Manager Meda DeWitt in response to today’s announcement: 

“The Trump administration and the oil industry’s congressional allies are stripping away safeguards that were put in place to ensure that future generations of Alaskans can inherit  land, waters and wildlife that our communities depend on. These places are not abstract landscapes — they are living homelands that sustain the Gwich’in, the Iñupiat, and so many others whose cultures, food security, and ways of life are intertwined with healthy caribou, salmon, and clean water. 

“Alaska’s Peoples should be free to nourish their families and uphold their responsibilities to the land without being forced to defend their very right to exist. Yet these repeated attacks on fair, science-based, and community-centered policies show how quickly Alaskan lives and Indigenous homelands are treated as expendable in the pursuit of industrial gain.” 

The resolution targeting the Arctic Refuge leasing program will now move to the Senate, while the Western Arctic management plan legislation will go to the president for his signature.