Do You Support a Ban on Arctic Drilling?

Update - April 29, 2019:

• Trump's offshore oil-drilling plan has been sidelined indefinitely, according to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.
• Bernhardt said the decision was made after a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's executive order re-authorizing offshore oil drilling in Arctic waters.

“By the time the court rules, that may be discombobulating to our plan,” Bernhardt told The Wall Street Journal. “What I can definitely say is, I’m not at a point now where it’s an imminent thing."

• Bloomberg reported, however, that the administration is only delaying a drilling expansion until after the 2020 election because White House officials "are worried that the president and Republican leaders in the southeast U.S. would lose votes if they pushed forward with the plan to sell new drilling rights in the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans."
• “Bipartisan opposition to offshore drilling from a growing number of local, state and federal officials across America has made this a political loser for President Trump, and he knows it,” said Kevin Curtis, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund.

“Every candidate for federal office in 2020 will be asked whether they stand with Trump and the oil companies or with the families, business owners, and local officials who oppose the expansion of dirty, dangerous and climate-wrecking drilling off our beaches.”

Countable's original updates appear below.

Update - April 1, 2019:

• A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump's executive order re-authorizing offshore oil drilling in Arctic waters, labeling it "unlawful and invalid."
• Trump's order had reversed Obama-era restrictions on offshore drilling in large swaths of the Arctic Ocean and canyons in the Atlantic.

“The wording of President Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawals indicates that he intended them to extend indefinitely, and therefore be revocable only by an act of Congress,” said U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, who was nominated to the bench by Obama.

• The American Petroleum Institute, a defendant in the case, lamented the ruling.

“In addition to bringing supplies of affordable energy to consumers for decades to come, developing our abundant offshore resources can provide billions in government revenue, create thousands of jobs and will also strengthen our national security,” it said in a statement.

Countable's original story appears below.

What’s the story?

• Interior Department officials announced on Wednesday that they’ve approved Hilcorp Energy’s plan to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, six miles off the Alaskan coast.
• This marks the first time U.S. regulators have approved oil and gas production facilities in federal Arctic waters.
• The Houston-based Hilcorp will not use traditional mobile drilling rigs—rather, the Liberty Project involves creating a nine-acre gravel island off the coast to host the drilling.

What are both sides saying?

• “Working with Alaska Native stakeholders, the Department of Interior is following through on President Trump’s promise of American energy dominance,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement.

“American energy dominance is good for the economy, the environment, and our national security. Responsibly developing our resources, in Alaska especially, will allow us to use our energy diplomatically to aid our allies and check our adversaries. That makes America stronger and more influential around the globe.”

• Environmentalists, including the Center for Biological Diversity, say the Alaska Liberty project “is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“This project sets us down a dangerous path of destroying the Arctic,” Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director for the group, said in a statement. “An oil spill in the Arctic would be impossible to clean up and the region is already stressed by climate change.”

What do you think?

Do you support the move to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: Libertyenergyproject.com)