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The state of Alaska sued the Biden administration on Wednesday over restrictions on the federal government imposed in December of Arctic oil and gas leases to be auctioned this week.
The lawsuit alleges that the restrictions, issued in December by the Interior Department, violate provisions of the 2017 tax reform package that mandate the sale to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Biden administration announced that the sale would cover the smallest acreage allowed by law, 400,000 acres.
The state’s lawsuit argued that the administration’s restrictions on the refuge’s coastal plain would make the acreage “impossible or impractical to develop.” The filing asks the U.S. District Court in Alaska to lift the December restrictions and prohibit the Interior Department from issuing the leases in question at auction.
“Congress did not authorize new direction for ANWR. President Biden’s Administration ignored the law and took this illegal detour without even presenting its final decision to the public for comment,” said the Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor (R) in a statement.
“We challenged the unprecedented cancellation of validly executed leases after the first sale, and we will take up that fight as well,” Taylor added.
The announcement of the lawsuit came shortly before the Department of the Interior announced that it did did not receive offers for the lease sale before Monday’s deadline. The first of the sales required by law in 2017, was held under the Trump administrationgenerated $14.4 million in deals, a fraction of the $2 billion the two lease sales were projected to generate.
“The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere – we would suggest that’s a prudent place to start, rather than engaging more in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular in the world,” Acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior Laura Daniel-Davis said in a statement.
Two high bidders withdrew from the area in 2022, while the administration canceled seven leases previously issued to the Alaska Export and Industrial Development Authority the following year.
Although the state and its congressional delegation have often clashed with the Biden administration over fossil fuel development, the administration approved the Project Willowa massive Arctic oil development project, after intense lobbying by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak).
An Interior Department spokesman told The Hill that the department does not comment on litigation, but was referring to the announcement about the lack of bids.
