Trump officials push for more oil and gas drilling in Alaska

Fossil fuel love fest celebrates rescinded EOs and promotes a new LNG pipeline

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin accompanied by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spent several days in Alaska promoting the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration’s deregulatory approach to the environment. On Sunday, June first, these three officials from the Trump administration participated in a roundtable discussion, which included Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, as well as Alaska senators Lisa Mukowski and Dan Sullivan.

The visit was in part a celebration of the rescinding of 70 Executive Orders from President Biden concerning oil production and the Alaska oil pipeline, as well as a rally of sorts to promote a “twin” pipeline that would carry LNG from the very north of the state 800 miles south to a port near Anchorage.

On Trump’s first day as he returned to the White House, he signed an Executive Order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” to “rescind, revoke, revise, amend, defer, or grant exemptions from any and all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions” in regard to previous environmental and cultural laws and rules. The EO also prioritizes the construction of the LNG pipeline.

The visit to Alaska and fossil fuel rah-rahs dovetail with the proposed rule change announced this week by the Interior Department that would lift environmental protections put in place during the Biden administration for the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. This rule change would potentially affect 23 million acres, an area larger than the state of South Carolina. The department claims that the regulations from the Biden administration are inconsistent with the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976, which governs extraction and other activities in the reserve. The department claims the regulations exceed the agency’s statutory authority.

In a press event held at Dead Horse, Alaska senator Sullivan described Burgum, Wright, and Zeldin as a “dream team” when it came to their promotion of Alaska’s fossil fuels and used the phrase “far left radicals” when speaking of the Biden administration. He also claimed, without proof, that the Biden administration had planned to shut down the Alaska pipeline and symbolically ripped up copies of Biden’s Executive Orders.

Industry and government representatives from South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates joined the event.

The press event at Dead Horse, Alaska. Photo EPA epa.gov

Accompanying Sullivan at the press event was Crawford Patkotak, the chairman of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, one of the Alaska Native corporations that handle the sharing of profits from the Alaska Oil Pipeline. Patkotak offered a prayer, talked of native Alaskans’ ready embrace of Christianity in the 1800s, and briefly sang an old hymn whose lyrics included “Give me oil in my land.” (One wonders if Patkotak has seen Killers of the Flower Moon.)

In a conference on Tuesday, Wright derided policy “in the name of climate change” that, in his opinion, would have no bearing on climate change and that ending oil extraction in Alaska would not diminish oil demand. He said, “You know, we hear terms like clean energy and renewable energy. These are inaccurate marketing terms. There is no energy source that does not take significant materials, land, and impact on the environment to produce. Zero.”

During Sunday’s roundtable discussion, Murkowski praised the Trump administration’s approach to more drilling and extraction and called for “energy security” and “energy dominance” for the United States. Zelden spoke of Alaska’s caribou and other natural wonders coexisting with drilling and extraction.

Also, during the roundtable, Burgum and Wright complained that regulations caused delays for energy projects. Yet when Nathanial Herz, a reporter with the Northern Journal, asked them to identify a project that had been held back in the last four years, neither official was able to do so. Both brought up contentious battles that have been waged between environmentalists and the energy industry that have gone on for decades.

Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the fossil fuel love fest. Amid signs reading “Alaska is Not for Sale” and “Protect our Public Lands” protesters called the intensification of fossil fuel extraction as a turning away from the climate crisis and expressed concerns over the push for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Some First Nations people of northern Canada and Alaska consider the coastal plain of the refuge sacred because the caribou they rely on calve there.

What are your thoughts on the oil and LNG pipelines in Alaska? Drop a comment and let me know.

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