Alaska’s resources are back on the table

Plus, IRA could cost $4.7T by 2050.

Happy Monday! Here’s the latest from me.

• Summit Carbon asks for timeline pause after SD eminent domain ban, March 24, 2025, American Experiment North Dakota.

• EPA’s House Cleaning Scraps Unworkable GHG Emissions Standards, March 25, 2025, Independent Women’s Forum.

• Cato Institute: Green New Deal may cost $4.7 trillion by 2050, March 26, 2025. Shout out to

  Travis Fisher
  and the team at the Cato Institute for quantifying the Inflation Reduction Act’s potential costs.

The Department of the Interior announced last week that it is pursuing steps to unleash Alaska’s natural resources. The Interior’s actions implement a Day One Trump administration executive order that reinstates oil and gas leases and prioritizes mining, logging, and liquified natural gas (LNG) resources while expediting arduous permitting.

It’s the opposite of the treatment Alaska received from the Biden administration. President Biden paused oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), formally revoked existing leases, and set up a lease sale designed to fail in the final weeks of his administration. The Biden administration had also shut down half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to any permitting and had denied the Ambler Road access project, which would unlock access to a wealth of critical minerals in Northwest Alaska.

Interior intends to reopen the 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that is available for leasing and reopen the 1.56 million acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas leasing.

Reuters reports that “Some Alaska indigenous nations … welcomed the announcement”:

“We applaud today’s decision by DOI and Secretary Burgum,” said Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation President Charles Lampe. “As the only community within ANWR’s 19-million-acre boundaries, we have fought for years for our right to self-determination and local economic development in our Indigenous homelands.”

The department also announced that it would revoke restrictions on land along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River “in order to convey these lands to State of Alaska.” This is designed to help make the Ambler Access Project and the Alaska LNG pipeline possible.

Also encouraging, Taiwan signed a letter of intent to buy Alaskan natural gas from the Alaska LNG Project, a proposed 807-mile pipeline that could carry 3.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily. The Japan Times reports, “South Korea, Japan and the Philippines have also expressed interest in natural gas from Alaska.” The pipeline may yet prove uneconomic, but steps like these may help the math shake out.

Reuters also notes that the oil industry may be “hesitant to rush into Alaska” given “the possibility of a political pendulum swing in four years.” Uncertainty remains an enormous issue for many companies, thanks to the lengthy and litigious permitting process in the U.S., but Congress can solidify some of these executive orders and agency rules into law and provide more certainty.

Honest minds disagree on the merits of particular projects. But Alaskans know that caring for the environment and developing its natural resources is the only true conservationist ethos. These moves by the Interior Department hold the potential for economic development while maintaining a clean environment.

This piece was originally published at Independent Women’s Forum Center for Energy and Conservation on March 26, 2025.