Trump administration plans to reopen closed Arctic waters off Alaska to oil and gas drilling
The Trump administration is seeking to reopen offshore Arctic areas that were closed to oil and gas leasing by the Obama administration, as well as almost all federal waters off Alaska.
The Department of Interior’s draft five-year national leasing plan, released on Thursday, proposes 19 Alaska lease sales — three in the Chukchi Sea, three in the Beaufort Sea, two in Cook Inlet and one each in 11 other regions, some of which have never had any lease sales.
The Obama administration in late 2016 took most federal Arctic waters off the table for oil and gas leasing. That administration placed the entire Chukchi Sea off-limits and all but a 2.8-million-acre strip of territory relatively close to shore in the Beaufort Sea.
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