30 ALASKA RESOURCE REVIEW WINTER 2025 BY YERETH ROSEN, ALASKA BEACON GOV. MIKE DUNLEAVY AND SEVERAL TOP OFFICIALS FROM HIS ADMINISTRATION CELEBRATED NEW EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED BY PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP IN LATE JANUARY THAT REMOVE RESTRICTIONS ON RESOURCE EXTRACTION IN ALASKA. Trump’s return to the White House means a promise for oil drilling in the Arctic, logging in Southeast Alaska and mining and other resource extraction around the state, the governor and his administration’s officials said at a news conference. “From my perspective, this is ‘Happy days are here again,’ to be honest with you,” Dunleavy said. “This is like wrapping a gigantic sled of Christmas presents for the state of Alaska.” While Dunleavy and other officials heaped praise on Trump, whom the governor called a “force of nature in the White House,” they heaped scorn on former President Joe Biden and his administration. “Jan. 20 really marked the cessation of the Biden administration’s war against Alaska. So It’s wonderful to be here basking in the light of morning in America, as we actually have a federal government that instead of treating us like a fief, is going to treat us as equal partners,” said John Boyle, commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. “And actually work to promote jobs and investment and opportunities in the state, versus lobbing one inimical policy after another in their quixotic quest, I guess, to turn Alaska into an open-air museum.” Similar scorn was expressed about environmentalists. “That we don’t have these wine-andcheese-eating environmentalists in Seattle or San Francisco or some other terrible city that wants to impose their agenda on us is a good thing,” Boyle said. Randy Ruaro, executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, predicted a flurry of oil activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain. New lease sales authorized by Trump will likely have a better industry response than did the lease sales held in 2021, where AIDEA was the main bidder, and earlier this month, in which there were no bidders, Ruaro said. AIDEA, a state-owned development corporation, had the leases it bought in 2021 “illegally cancelled and stopped,” he said. Those leases could hold 3 billion to 4 billion barrels of oil, and Trump’s executive order reinstates them, he said. As for the lack of response to the last lease sale, he blamed the Biden administration’s environmental conditions. “Terms and conditions were just too onerous. You couldn’t develop under those terms,” he said. Boyle said there will also be more development in the National Petroleum Reserve, on the western side of the North Slope. Trump reversing Biden policies, including recent policy calls made by the administration, “as they kind of slithered out the door, is going to be particularly important for us” to increase energy development and production, Boyle said. Boyle conceded that the Biden administration had approved the giant Willow oil project being developed by ConocoPhillips in the reserve. But that administration put too many conditions on the development, hurdles that are now removed, he said. The mineral resources that provide the oil to be developed at Willow extends farther across the reserve, he said. “There’s going to be multiple Willows that are available to develop in the NPR-A.” The Ambler Access Project being sponsored by AIDEA is another development project that has new life in the Trump administration. The project, which AIDEA proposes to fund, would put a road stretching about 200 miles into the Brooks Range foothills to provide access to an isolated mining district dominated by copper reserves. The Biden administration “illegally stopped” AIDEA’s right to continue that project, Ruaro said. “We look forward to, probably the end of March, reengaging with a number of entities engaging in that project,” Ruaro said, listing some supportive tribal governments. “We’re all happy that we’re going to get a chance to move ahead and build some projects that’ll help Alaskans.” Though embraced by Alaska politicians and the mining industry, it is opposed by a coalition of tribal governments, environmentalists, sport hunters, some Native corporations and some budget hawks who do not want state money spent on it. The Biden administration in June officially rejected the project as proposed by AIDEA. Boyle hailed the Trump order rescinding protections for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest, saying it will allow logging to resume in the largest U.S. national forest. “The federal government has done everything that they could under the Biden administration and before that, under the Obama administration and so on, to stop any kind of timber harvest in the Tongass National Forest. In my mind, this was the grossest mismanagement of a federal asset that I can imagine,” Boyle said. Some other policies for which Trump has reversed Biden administration positions concern hunting in national park units, state control over waterways and the way fish are harvested in them, and broad land-management plans, the officials said. Not included in Trump’s actions is anything that would restart development of the Pebble mine, the controversial copper project in the Bristol Bay region that was stopped through action by the Biden administration Environmental Protection Agency. But Dunleavy, who supports Pebble’s development, said he plans to raise that issue with Trump. Both Dunleavy and Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor predicted legal challenges to the new Trump policies. STATE OFFICIALS PRAISE TRUMP’S ALASKA PLANS
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