Former President Donald Trump promised to boost American energy production by approving new oil and gas exploration projects in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
In an interview with platform CEO Elon Musk on Monday night on X, Trump promised to “quickly” restart oil and gas production on Alaska’s North Slope four years after President Joe Biden suspended drilling plans.
“I’m going to get it moving very quickly because it’s important not only for Alaska,” Trump said, but also “for the United States.” It’s “pure, really good stuff.”
The Republican president had previously opened the 1.6 million-hectare stretch of Alaska’s north coast for oil and gas development under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The administration issued the first leases for drilling in the ANWR coastal plain on Trump’s last full day in office before Biden halted the projects and finally terminated the leases last summer.
Drilling on the 1.6 million acres of the nearly 20 million-acre preserve has been a political football for decades, with Republican administrations repeatedly defeating Democrats in attempts to bring oil and gas production to communities within the so-called 1002 area. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil lie beneath the surface of an area the size of South Carolina. If successful, the region, just 60 miles from where companies have been drilling for decades with minimal environmental impact in Prudhoe Bay, could become the most productive oil field in the country.
William Shughart, research director of the Independent Institute and professor at Utah State University, wrote in 2017: “The potential peak daily production there, 1.4 million barrels per day, is more oil than the United States imports from Saudi Arabia.”
“We wanted to drill,” Trump said on Monday, “and we would make so much money that we would supply Europe with oil.”
“President Trump gets it,” said Rick Whitbeck, Alaska country director for the nonprofit energy organization Power the Future. “Alaska is a key part of America’s energy security, and developing ANWR is a key part of Alaska’s energy future. When Congress authorized development of ANWR in 2017, they knew that.”
Biden has shut down oil and gas development in the Arctic, part of a broader administration campaign to close 30 percent of the country’s land and waterways by 2030. The initiative is called “30 for 30” and is primarily aimed at Alaska. Last year, the Interior Department closed another roughly 16 million acres in Alaska to new oil and gas development opportunities, and in April issued further regulations against oil development on 13 million acres of the state.
The states of the Lower 48, particularly New Mexico, meanwhile, have suffered from the Biden administration’s suspension of oil and gas leases on federal lands under a moratorium that has lasted more than a year. But the Navajo Nation has been denied the opportunity to develop its own oil and gas reserves in New Mexico, a decision provoked by a rival tribe that is now the subject of an ethics complaint against the Interior Department.
Musk, founder of electric car manufacturer Tesla, said in the interview on Monday evening that politicians were making a mistake by demonizing the oil and gas industry.
“If we stopped using oil and gas now,” Musk said, “we would all starve and the economy would collapse.”
The Tesla CEO argued that the industry has more time than the left-wing consensus suggests to develop new technologies that could replace finite resources in the future.
“We don’t have to rush,” Musk said, “and we don’t have to stop farmers from farming their fields or ban people from eating steaks.”
