The Trump administration is accelerating the approval of some federal permits for oil and gas companies to drill in Alaska’s North Slope, exempting winter exploration projects from environmental reviews.
This marks the administration’s latest effort to encourage the development of fossil fuel resources in Alaska’s remote terrain, meant to advance President Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda and increase exports of oil and gas to Asia.
The Bureau of Land Management announced on Thursday that it was exempting “important winter exploration projects” in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
This includes projects such as exploratory seismic surveys, exploration wells, and plugging and abandonment.
Better known as NEPA, the more than 50-year-old law requires all agencies to consider and review the environmental effects of proposed projects before issuing federal permits.
Agencies are permitted, however, to issue or apply a categorical exclusion to certain projects or actions that fall under a category that does not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. When such an exclusion is applied, it typically means that an agency does not have to prepare an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.
Interior officials said Thursday they established the new categorical exclusion for Alaskan drilling after analyzing “dozens of previous environmental assessments” conducted for wintertime exploration in the NPR-A.
“Those analyses show that those exploration activities result in no significant impacts on human health or the environment when conducted under established operating procedures and mitigation measures,” the agency said.
“Wintertime exploration relies on temporary ice roads, ice pads, and snow routes where the only potential sign of exploration after the snow melts is generally the well-head, if drilled,” it said.
Environmentalists have long said oil and gas drilling exploration activities should be subject to federal scrutiny, as projects such as seismic surveys rely on equipment and vehicles that can weigh over 15 tons.
BLM officials did say that the agency must verify there are no extraordinary circumstances, such as potential impacts to endangered species, before applying a categorical exclusion to each project.
The decision had been expected for weeks, after an August report from Public Domain revealed the agency was considering issuing the categorical exclusion to fast-track Alaska drilling permits.
Sources familiar with the drafting process told the outlet that the exclusion criteria were drafted without any public comment period or input from those living in or around the NPR-A.
TRUMP TRIES TO BOOST OIL AND GAS DRILLING IN REMOTE ALASKA
While the categorical exclusion does not apply to all oil and gas activities in Alaska’s North Slope, it would allow oil and gas companies to ramp up exploratory projects for new wells.
In March, BLM held what officials described as one of the “top sales” ever for drilling rights in the region. The lease sale garnered 430 bids on nearly 200 tracts spanning more than 1 million acres in the NPR-A, with the total high bids hitting $163 million.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
