Democracy Dies in Darkness
Climate and Environment

Trump officials rush to auction off rights to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden can block it

Officials aim to sell drilling rights to the pristine wilderness’s coastal plain before the president-elect takes office

By
November 16, 2020 at 11:29 a.m. EST
A polar bear walks across rubble ice in the Alaska portion of the southern Beaufort Sea. (Mike Lockhart/USGS/AP)

The Trump administration is asking oil and gas firms to pick spots where they want to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as it races to open the pristine wilderness to development and lock in drilling rights before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The “call for nominations” to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register allows companies to identify tracts on which to bid during an upcoming lease sale on the refuge’s nearly 1.6 million-acre coastal plain, a sale that the Interior Department aims to hold before Biden takes the oath of office in January. The move would be a capstone of President Trump’s efforts to open up public lands to logging, mining and grazing, which Biden strongly opposes.