President-elect Joe Biden is going to sign an executive order placing a moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Must Read Alaska has learned.
It will be among Biden’s initial acts on his first day of office and will come one day after the Bureau of Land Management finalized the leases for the Coastal Plain, one of the crowning achievements of the Trump Administration.
Biden has the ability to put a moratorium, but he can’t take away the leases that were given out, because that would be a taking. He can put a moratorium on the permits, although that, too, could be viewed as a taking.
This story will be updated.
