As Trump makes big push for Alaska oil, a federal judge reverses Biden-era lease cancellations
Judge Sharon Gleason cited a 2017 tax law and the recent Supreme Court Loper Bright decision to say the Biden administration overstepped its authority.
An Alaska federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Biden administration illegally cancelled seven leases for oil and gas development in the state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite concerns that drilling could harm the environment and contribute to climate change.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled the Biden administration’s decision to cancel the first-ever leases in the refuge’s coastal plain in 2023 conflicted with requirements under a 2017 tax law.
The judge said that tax law instructed the U.S. Interior Department to manage the oil and gas program in the area consistent with a 1976 law, which requires a court order to cancel leases. In other words, the government can’t cancel them administratively.
Citing last year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Gleason said she could not defer to the Biden administration’s interpretation of the 2017 law that found leeway to cancel the leases since the government didn’t fully account for environmental harms from oil and gas development.
The Loper Bright decision was notable because it overruled the Chevron legal precedent, which had instructed judges to defer to federal agencies when laws were ambiguous.
Gleason had also refused, in 2021, to halt the lease sales before they occurred. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state-run corporation, had ultimately bid on and won all seven leases in dispute in the present case.
An energy shift in Washington
Fossil fuel energy development has become a key priority for President Donald Trump in his second stint in the White House, and pursuing those resources was the subject of one of the first executive orders he signed after becoming president in January.
Gleason’s decision came just days after U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, acting on those orders, announced his department would take measures to open up huge swaths of untouched Alaskan land to oil and gas development.
The tax law at the heart of the lawsuit decided this week required that two lease sales be offered by late 2024 in the refuge’s coastal plain. The area encompasses about 1.5 million acres of refuge that borders the Beaufort Sea.
The area is the home to wildlife like caribou and polar bears, and indigenous people rely on the region for subsistence hunting.
The first lease sale was held in the final days of the first Trump administration, and AIDEA was the major bidder in that sale. The second lease sale, during the Biden administration, drew no bids but was criticized by Alaskan leaders for being too restrictive.
Groups promise a continued fight
Environmental and indigenous groups that supported the Biden administration’s cancellations said that they would continue the fight, but called Gleason’s order problematic.
“This court decision lets a state agency with little transparency or accountability hold onto oil and gas leases on lands sacred to the Gwich’in,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, an indigenous non-profit, in a statement.
Moreland continued: “This disappointing ruling ignores the destruction oil drilling will do to our communities and only deepens our resolve in fiercely defending the coastal plain from oil and gas extraction. We will always protect the caribou, our way of life, and future generations.”