Trump Administration Opens Arctic Wildlife Refuge to Oil Drilling

By Abigail West, US Policy

Trump Administration Opens Arctic Wildlife Refuge to Oil Drilling
Photo credit: Vladimir Endovitskiy

Trump announced in October that he would open the entire 1.56 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing. These lands are sacred to the Gwich’in Nation, home to irreplaceable wildlife, wilderness, and cultural values, and have never seen industrialization. The Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, held a press conference in October to confirm that the Department of the Interior will open the Coastal Plain to maximum oil and gas development to benefit corporate polluters (EarthJustice 2025).

These action packages were designed to improve public health and safety for Alaskans, advance energy development, and revamp land and resource management across the state. Along with reopening the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the King Cove–Cold Bay Road corridor will be established via a land exchange, right-of-way permits for the Ambler Road will be finalized, and land allotments for eligible Alaska Native veterans of the Vietnam War will be offered (DOI 2025). The Amber Road permits are costly and have been opposed by 88 Alaska Native Tribes and First Nations, and will cause substantial harm to wildlife, including caribou. 

Alaska’s Arctic warming is 3-5 times higher than anywhere else in the world, in a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. This accelerated warming is primarily due to the ice-albedo feedback loop, in which the Arctic loses its reflective ice and snow cover, allowing darker ocean and land beneath to absorb more heat, creating a cycle that drives faster warming (EPA 2024). This explanation means that Arctic oil drilling will have disastrous effects on Alaskans and countless other Americans. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to numerous animals, including providing essential habitat for species such as Porcupine caribou, denning polar bears, and other wildlife (Harvard, 2025). 

In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) (NPS, 1980) designated 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Range, known as the Coastal Plain, for gas development. No lease sales were made until 2021, when Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. This Act required the Secretary of the Interior to conduct at least two lease sales over 10 years. Under President Trump, the Interior issued 9 of 11 leases totaling 437,804 acres. President Biden paused all activities related to BLM’s Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program in January 2021 through Executive Order 13990 (Federal Register 2021). Trump recently reversed this by allowing oil drilling and development leases to continue. Trump believes that opening up the Coastal Plain will ‘unleash’ domestic energy and reverse years of more restrictive policies, including Biden’s pause on lease cancellation (White House 2025). Lease sales allow companies to bid for the right to explore and potentially drill an area, and the actual development of oil comes years later, after permits are acquired and infrastructure is built. For example, places that have never seen industrialization or been touched by humans, construction, infrastructure development, seismic testing, and pipeline construction will be introduced. Trump and the Interior argue this will strengthen energy security, support “local control,” and unlock “promising untapped energy resources.” 

The Gwich’in Nation Steering Committee condemns the actions the Trump Administration took to open the entire Coastal Plain, claiming the plan is a threat to the Porcupine Caribou calving and nursery grounds there, and therefore to their entire way of life. The Gwich’in call the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, which means “the sacred place where life begins” in their language. The Porcupine Caribou are essential to the nutritional, cultural, and spiritual needs of the Gwich’in Nation, and they have been fighting to protect the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd for decades. Any disruption to these lands in the Arctic Refuge, according to the Gwich’in, would negatively affect their health and migration routes. Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, stated that “this action by the Trump administration is a direct attack on the Gwich’in, who have for decades been a voice for the caribou and stood against the destruction of the Arctic Refuge. A leasing program that would open the entire Coastal Plain completely ignores the impacts that oil and gas development would have on the land, on wildlife, and on our communities,” (Gwich’in Steering Committee 2025).

Earthjustice, NRDC, and others call the Trump Administration’s decision to open up the entire Coastal Plain a “massive public lands attack” that auctions off treasured lands to fossil fuel companies. These groups have concerns about burning oil from ANWR, which would increase greenhouse gas emissions, and about backslides on U.S. climate commitments.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and other state economic officials have voiced support for expanding oil drilling in the state. In June, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright outlined the impact President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) will have on unleashing energy and economic growth in Alaska. The state’s energy sector employs about 8% of all payrolls and generates nearly one-fifth of total business earnings, the fourth-highest share among states (Anchorage Daily News 2025). This legislation will protect approximately 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs over the next four years while creating thousands more. In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Administrator Zeldin and Secretaries Burgum and Wright stated that “With the passage of OBBB, Alaska will be liberated from the radical environmentalism that has kept its extraordinary resources locked away for far too long. It reverses the damage of the Biden administration by opening federal lands and waters to oil, gas, coal, geothermal and mineral leasing while rescinding every so-called ‘green’ corporate welfare subsidy from Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction Act.'” (EPA 2025) Republicans cast environmental opposition as “blocking progress” and harming working families in Alaska; they say technological advances can minimize environmental harm.

As Indigenous nations and environmental groups are expected to sue again arguing violations of NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and treaty/Trust obligations, there is always a possibility that this expansion will be reversed. As a reminder, Biden’s Interior Department suspended and later canceled the original leases, citing legal and environmental flaws in the Trump-era review. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Alaska held that the Biden administration lacked authority to cancel the leases unilaterally, sending the issue back to Interior—and effectively clearing a path for the new Trump team to proceed.

“The repeal of the Biden-era Record of Decision for the Arctic Leasing Program, and the move to open over 1.56 million acres of public land for auction has the potential to cause irreparable damage to the Gwich’in way of life,” said Galen Gilbert, First Chief of the Arctic Village Council. As oil executives size up the Coastal Plain, and the first lease sale could come within months, the Gwich’in and many other lawyers and activists prepare for a long battle against the Trump Administration and over whether oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Range is in the name of climate and nature protection.

References

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“Alaska (U.S. National Park Service).” https://www.nps.gov/locations/alaska/index.htm (Accessed November 25, 2025).

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“Trump Administration Opens the Entire Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas Leasing.” Earthjustice. https://earthjustice.org/press/2025/trump-administration-opens-the-entire-coastal-plain-of-the-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-to-oil-and-gas-leasing (Accessed November 24, 2025).

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US EPA, OA. 2025. “ICYMI: Administrator Zeldin in Anchorage Daily News: ‘Alaska’s energy renaissance awaits, and the One Big Beautiful Bill is our key to unlocking it.’” https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/icymi-administrator-zeldin-anchorage-daily-news-alaskas-energy-renaissance-awaits-0 (Accessed November 26, 2025).

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