Alaska governor asks Trump to roll back restrictions on oil and gas drilling

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy holds during a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, in Juneau, Alaska, outlining his budget proposal for the coming year. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)

JUNEAU, ALASKA — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s wish list for the incoming Trump administration includes oil and gas exploration in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and reversing restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.

Dunleavy has asked President-elect Donald Trump to issue a state-specific executive order that would set in motion “critical agency actions that would restore opportunity to Alaska" in line with Trump's first administration. Dunleavy and other Republican political leaders in the state have expressed excitement about Trump's return to the White House and believe he will be more friendly to oil and gas, mineral and other resource development than President Joe Biden.

Alaska has a long history of fighting what it sees as federal overreach, particularly when it comes to decisions that hinder development of the state’s vast resources.

Dunleavy outlined his requests in a letter to Trump dated Nov. 15 and publicly released this week. He is also asking Trump to create a Cabinet-level task force that would have the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies work together on Trump’s Alaska-specific policy goals.

The direction taken on some of the issues raised by Dunleavy has shifted dramatically from one federal administration to the next, with the policy calls often winding up in court. The debate over protections for the country’s largest national forest, the Tongass in southeast Alaska, for example, has ping-ponged back and forth since the Clinton administration.

Bridget Psarianos, staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska — which has been involved in litigation aimed at protecting places like the refuge — said many of the issues on Dunleavy's list are ones her group has worked on for decades, “and I think we're just getting prepared to continue to hold the line.”

Her group will scrutinize “any and all attempts to cut corners and expedite” projects, including drilling in the refuge, she said.

Trustees for Alaska also has been involved in a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration's approval of the large Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

While Willow might be seen as one of the areas where Biden and Dunleavy agree, the current federal administration paired its 2023 approval of the project with plans for restrictions on drilling activity in other parts of the petroleum reserve, which Dunleavy called disgraceful.

Biden as a candidate opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. After taking office he ordered a review of the leasing program — just weeks after the first lease sale there was held under Trump. Seven leases from that sale were later cancelled.

A 2017 law that's been touted by Trump called for offering two lease sales in the refuge's coastal plain by late 2024. The second such sale — announced earlier this month — is set for Jan. 9, 2025, less than two weeks before Biden leaves office. It will include a fraction of the total amount of land that was available for bidding in the first sale and has been condemned as paltry and a mockery of the law by Dunleavy and the state's Republican U.S. senators.

Dunleavy, in an interview with The Associated Press last month, said he considers the concept of an energy transition from fossil fuels “pretty much dead — meaning, demand for energy is growing so exponentially, there’s very few experts that believe it can get there without fossil fuels.”

“I personally would love to see the whole renewable world continue to expand, and I would love to see the oil and gas world, and coal, expand, especially if we can capture that carbon,” he said.

He has billed carbon offset and underground storage programs as a way for Alaska to diversify its revenues while continuing to develop resources such as oil and gas, coal and timber and not impose new taxes.