The Biden Administration is now locking up another three million acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
With just three days left in his administration, his Department of Interior is calling the area set aside for oil and gas a “special area” that must be saved for subsistence, and the ruling takes effect immediately through an interim ruling, for an area near where ConocoPhillips is developing the Willow project and Nuna oil and gas project.
The NPR-A was set aside by the federal government for oil and gas development in 1923. Management of the area was later transferred from the Navy to the Department of Interior-Bureau of Land Management. Now, 13% of it is being taken away from that original mission by Biden.
The Interior Department claimed that the ruling is based on 80,000 comments received from people who live on the North Slope.
The problem with that is that fewer than 11,500 people live in the entire North Slope Borough.
Congressman Nick Begich didn’t mince words:
“The Biden administration’s Alaskan assault team, led by Deb Haaland, continues to celebrate their all-out dismantling of Alaska’s economic future,” Begich said. “They are obstructionist, anti-Alaskan, anti-progress, anti-development, Rule us from Washington radicals. Today Joe Biden put forward New and Expanded “Special Areas” that make new development in the National Petroleum Reserve impossible should they be allowed to stand. Biden did end up building a wall after all. Unfortunately it was one that separates American families from the abundant prosperity they deserve. Thankfully, Biden’s war on American families is about to come to a close, and commonsense conservatives in the Congress and the incoming White House are already working to dismantle Biden’s legacy of failure.”
