Alaska is suing the U.S. Administration over the decision of the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to restrict access to drilling and mining in a large part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A).
"The new rules were passed without proper input from affected parties, exceeded their congressional authorization and were rushed into place as an end-run on congressional oversight," the state of Alaska said in a statement announcing the lawsuit it had initiated.
Earlier this year, the Biden Administration finalized a strategy to help protect federal lands, including restricting access to drilling and mining on more than 13 million acres in the NPR-A, as the U.S. Administration proposed last year.
The new regulations for the NPR-A "would ensure maximum protection for the more than 13 million acres of Special Areas in the reserve, while supporting subsistence activities for Alaska Native communities," the Interior said in September when it proposed the rule.
The rule doesn't concern existing developments and projects, including the Willow oil project, led by ConocoPhillips, which the Biden Administration approved last year, angering environmentalists and some of the Democrat base.
The oil industry and the leading Republican Senators from Alaska criticized the final rule, arguing that it would adversely affect the state's revenues and worsen the local business climate.
Now the state of Alaska is suing to challenge that rule, with Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor saying that "These new rules circumvent the congressional mandate to develop and manage the NPR-A lands for oil and gas uses." "This lawsuit seeks to prevent overreach by federal agencies that disregard Alaska's rights," Taylor added.
Earlier this week, Alaska also filed suit in the United States Court of Federal Claims seeking to recover lost revenues from nine canceled federal oil and gas leases covering lands on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain. The case seeks compensation owed to the State of Alaska due to the United States' decision to cancel oil and gas leases from which the State would have earned hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues, the state said in the complaint.
"This about-face by the federal government opposes the direction given by Congress and deprives Alaska of our natural resource rights," Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More