One of the early acts by the President Joe Biden Administration was to place a moratorium on oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, according to the White House’s document on the President’s Day One Executive Actions. In March, House Joint Resolution 12 was passed, which urges the federal government to remove its temporary hold on development in ANWR.
Congressman Don Young spoke on KSRM’s ‘Sound Off’, “ANWR was created with the stipulation that the 1002 areas could be open if the congress said so. Everybody knew that the value of that 1002 area. Now the refuge is 17 million acres including 90,000 acres in Kaktovik owned by the natives in Kaktovik. They have been precluded from doing that. What we’re trying to do, by passage of this law, is to have them put up for sale as it was this year. There was minor interest because the companies were worried about lawsuits and the administration, of course, President Biden has got this idea about climate change will solve it by not burning carbon or developing any carbon availability. He, by directive, have stopped the lease operations and actually have put it off limits, but it will take an act of congress to undo what we did.”
Young notes that will be difficult. But points out the fact that oil is, and will continue to be, in demand. The congressman says that HJR 12 urging the Alaska Congressional Delegation to work to repeal part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to honor the Alaska Statehood Act is simply just a resolution. “I love the resolutions, but they’re just resolutions and the president’s not going to listen to a state legislative body, all due respect. We’re already doing what they ask us to do, it’s just a matter of how this turns out. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that there is no final. We’ll continue to work on this project until it’s finally done and I may be long gone, but it will be done. We’ll see what happens in the short period of time, but the long period I’ll guarantee you it’ll be done. Some will be reading the books back in the history about how this happened. We’ll see what happens.”
HJR 12 states that sec. 20001 of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 would adversely affect oil and gas development in the refuge.