By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
This article has been updated.
A federal judge in Anchorage has confirmed her decision to uphold the suspension of oil and gas survey work in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In a 19-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason declined to reconsider a 2023 ruling against the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, which won oil leases in the refuge during a January 2021 sale and sued the Biden administration after it suspended those leases.
The Biden administration subsequently canceled the leases altogether, and AIDEA is challenging that decision in a separate lawsuit.
“Today’s court decision in Alaska is a small part, not the conclusion, in defending the rights of Alaskans and AIDEA to our ANWR leases. We will continue to fight against the wrongful cancelation of our leases,” said Randy Ruaro, executive director of AIDEA, by email.
AIDEA, Alaska’s state-owned development bank, won seven tracts in the refuge during a Jan. 6, 2021, lease sale, but the Biden administration immediately suspended work on those and other tracts after taking office.
The lease sale was the result of decades of work by Alaska’s congressional delegation, which repeatedly pushed the idea of drilling in the refuge until Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, added a provision in President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law.
That law mandated a lease sale in 2021 and a second sale before Dec. 22, 2024.
The federal government has said that it expects to issue a final environmental impact statement on that second sale by the end of March, but U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said he’s not certain that second sale will ever happen.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t trust this administration on any issue at all,” he said.
Read More: Federal judge confirms decision that stopped oil work in Alaska’s Arctic refuge