Regulatory uncertainty. It鈥檚 a tidy phrase that sums up the problem that the Trump administration ran into while working in favor of the oil and gas administration at the expense of all else.听And听just like we predicted, that uncertainty cost them their signature drilling project.听What sunk Republicans鈥 plans was simply the rushed, incomplete nature of the process and paperwork involved.听On June 1, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland听suspended activity at oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, undoing some of the damage implemented by the previous administration.
First, some context:听at , ANWR is the largest unit in our country鈥檚 National Wildlife Refuge system. Located in the northeast corner of Alaska, it鈥檚 one of the last unspoiled stretches of land left on this continent, and is home to 250 species of animals, including the imperiled southern Beaufort Sea polar bear population听and听migratory birds.听ANWR also provides calving grounds for one of the largest remaining herds of caribou. The Gwich鈥檌n Nation relies on those caribou, and other natural resources in ANWR, to support their way of life.
President Eisenhower protected听ANWR in 1960, and President Carter enlarged it to its current size听in 1980. Crucially, Carter left听ANWR鈥檚 1.5 million-acre coastal plane,听available for oil exploration, but only with congressional approval.听
A survey conducted in 1984 and 1985 concluded that as many as could lie beneath the coastal plane鈥檚 tundra. Republicans have been pushing to drill there since at least 1977. They came close in March 1989, when a Senate committee approved drilling the coastal plane. But that was just ten days before the Exxon Valdez disaster. They came close again in 1995, when the party controlled both houses of Congress. But President Clinton vetoed the measure. They thought they had approval听during the George W. Bush administration, only to lose out to a filibuster.
Over the last 40 years, drilling in ANWR transformed from a financial issue听into a symbolic one. Falling oil prices meant that oil extraction there would no longer be profitable. As the public learned what the oil and gas industries knew about climate change, and as it became clear that oil exploration in the refuge would threaten keystone species like the polar bear, drilling there also became . Still, winning this symbolic argument mattered so much to Republicans that they wrote it into the only significant legislative achievement they managed to pass during the Trump administration: the 2017 corporate tax cuts, which on the sale of oil and gas leases in ANWR.
Trump鈥檚 Department of the Interior, managed first by scandal-plagued Ryan Zinke, then by the even more corrupt David Bernhardt, got down to business. Despite the flagrantly illegal nature of much of the work conducted at the department during the tenure of those two secretaries, the standard process听still had to be followed. The biggest hurdle for Trump鈥檚 DOI听was the requisite Environmental Impact Statement, a required document that outlines how a proposed project will affect the planet.
As an aside, that EIS was approved听during the illegal tenure of William Perry Pendley (an openly racist, homophobic, xenophobe who鈥檚 been working to steal public lands from the American people for at least 40 years) as the acting director听of the Bureau of Land Management from 2019 until 2020. The fallout from听Pendley鈥檚 work has yet to fully shake out in court, but adds an additional risk factor for the future of oil exploration in ANWR.
But the Trump administration failed to complete the mandated EIS until late 2019, after the 2017 tax cut law.听Basically, they flunked their homework assignment.
On Tuesday, Haaland signed听, which听reads:
In light of the alleged legal deficiencies underlying the program, including the inadequacy of the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, place a temporary moratorium on all activities ofthe Federal Government relating to the implementation of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program, as established by the Record of Decision signed August 17, 2020, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Secretary shall review the program and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, conduct a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.
The writing was on the wall long before this, though. Last year, all major banks announced they wouldn鈥檛 provide financial support for any drilling projects in ANWR, due to the transparently rushed nature of the EIS, along with the general unpopularity of the project.听So when Trump鈥檚 DOI rushed through a lease sale on January 6 (yes, that January 6), no major oil companies participated. Only about half of the available lease areas were sold, all at their minimum rate of $25 per-acre鈥攚hich only听raised about $14.4 million, well short of the $1.8 billion Republicans had forecasted. It wasn鈥檛 even clear if any of the lease buyers had the financial ability to conduct oil exploration operations.
Now, with Interior Secretary Haaland ordering a new environmental review鈥攚hen conducted properly, the听process听should and take several years 鈥攁nd President Biden proposing听a budget听to address climate change, pollution, and public lands, it seems like the Republican dream of drilling for oil in ANWR may finally be over. In the end, it wasn鈥檛 public opinion, overwhelming scientific evidence, or even economic factors that killed it. It was simply competence.