The legacy media narrative is that Alaska Native groups approve of President Joe Biden’s pretend leases in the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The second lease sale for oil and gas tracts mandated by Congress in the 2017 Tax Act received no bids at all, while the first one only received scant interest. The bids were just not viable, with the Deep State working against oil and gas.
But Natives who live in the farthest northern reaches of the state are unhappy about the Biden Administration’s fake-lease strategy and the comments made by the Department of Interior after the second lease failed to get any interest.
“The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along – there are some places too special and sacred to put at risk with oil and gas drilling. This proposal was misguided in 2017, and it’s misguided now,” said Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis, who came from the environmental industry’s National Wildlife Federation before joining the Biden Administration. “The BLM has followed the law and held two lease sales that have exposed the false promises made in the Tax Act. The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere; we’d suggest that’s a prudent place to start, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the world.”
That was insulting to people who actually live in the region.
“Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the Bureau of Land Management received no bids in the congressionally-mandated oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s (ANWR) Coastal Plain. DOI’s comments are deeply insulting to our region given that they undermine the will of Kaktovik, the only community within ANWR’s 19-million-acre expanse,” said Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat.
Harcharek said the lack of interest by bidders is a byproduct of years of inconsistent policy moves by the Biden Administration regarding indigenous North Slope Iñupiaq lands, intended to stymie economic development in the region.
“The Biden administration’s approach to ANWR has been defined by its efforts to exclude Indigenous voices from Kaktovik, the only community within ANWR, from the policymaking process while elevating outside groups and voices who have no connection to our lands and people. Our community has a right to shape our shared economic future, and we will continue to fight against the Biden administration’s attempts to make us environmental refugees in our homelands,” Harcharek said.
“North Slope communities want to advance Iñupiaq self-determination through durable, collaborative policy making. These communities were dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s decision to initiate and finalize an unnecessary supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) that did not reflect the majority consensus of local and regional elected officials, while also minimizing development opportunities contrary to the spirit of the law,” he continued.
The result exemplifies the federal government’s deeply flawed policy approach to this issue, creating industry uncertainty during the ANWR lease sales process. It’s a deliberate federal approach, he said, “and it is shameful that the Biden administration would seek to use our economic security as a political football.”
Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat serves the eight communities of Alaska’s North Slope Borough – the northernmost municipality in the United States, across a remote 95,000 square miles from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean. It faces the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea.
Th State of Alaska is suing over the bad-faith actions of the federal government in its actions in the 1002 area.
“Interior’s continued and irrational opposition under the Biden Administration to responsible energy development in the Arctic continues America on a path of energy dependence instead of utilizing the vast resources we have available,” Dunleavy said. “These resources not only help our energy independence as a nation but also grow the Alaska economy and put more money in the Alaska Permanent Fund for future generations,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy. He said he is hoping for a brighter future for Alaska with Donald Trump returning as president.
Charles Lampe, who is Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation’s president, said Kaktovik wasn’t even included in the discussion. It is the only community within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“As the only community that exists within ANWR, Kaktovik should have been included at the policymaking table throughout this policymaking process,” said Lampe. “There’s a reason that the people of Kaktovik voted over 75% in favor of the Trump-Vance political ticket. This current administration keeps adding insult to injury with their flawed processes, falsely claiming to work with those who this will most affect.”
The oil and gas lease tracts put forward by the Biden Administration were part of a “disingenuous move designed to meet the minimum legal requirements outlined by Congress while undermining any economic potential in our region—a bad faith effort that jeopardizes the economic and cultural future of our communities for political gain,” the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat said when the second bid tracts were revealed in December.
