US scraps Trump plan for wider oil exploration in Alaska

A decision by the Biden administration announced late Monday to reverse a Trump-era policy will reduce the land available for oil exploration and development in Arctic Alaska from 82 percent to 58 percent, according to analysts.

The U.S. Department of the Interior said on Monday it will scrap the Trump administration’s decision that authorised expanded leasing and development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, or NPR-A. Officials in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Monday announced plans to return to Obama-era rules for oil and gas development in the vast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope.

According to a written statement by the BLM Alaska office, attorneys for the agency are expected to file a status report in the U.S. District Court of Alaska, indicating that BLM wants to go back to the 2013 NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan, which is essentially the land-use plan for the 23-million-acre reserve.

With the amendments, the BLM will return to the Obama-era plan that leaves just 52 percent of the NPR in Alaska available for oil and gas drilling. The Trump administration plan left 82 percent open for such purposes. Even though former American president Trump took several steps to try to boost oil-and-gas development in Alaska, production in the state fell to a 43 year low in 2020, as drillers focus their attention on Texas and other southern states.

Alaska produced 448,000 barrels of oil per day last year, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Production in the state peaked in 1988 at more than 2 million barrels per day.

“This decision reflects the Biden-Harris administration’s priority of reviewing existing oil and gas programs to ensure balance on America’s public lands and waters to benefit current and future generations,” the Department of the Interior, of which BLM is a part, said in a statement.

The Arctic Alaska area is home to a distinct population of caribou and is the summer nest for large numbers of migratory birds. However, since 2013 a handful of large oil discoveries have been made around the Teshekpuk Lake area, most notably ConocoPhillips’ US $8 billion Willow prospect.

In 2017, the U.S. Geological Survey drastically increased its estimate for the amount of recoverable oil in the NPR-A, largely on the belief that additional Nanushuk oil formations are available in and around the Teshekpuk Lake area. The USGS now estimates there are roughly 8.8 billion barrels of available oil in the reserve and adjacent state lands, up from just 896 million barrels in 2010.