Arctic waters off Alaska may reopen to oil and gas drilling

The Trump administration is seeking to reopen offshore Arctic areas that were closed to oil and gas leasing by the Obama administration, as well as almost all federal waters off Alaska, reports Arctic Now’s Yereth Rosen. The US Department of Interior’s draft five-year national leasing plan proposes 19 Alaska lease sales – three in the Chukchi Sea, three in the Beaufort Sea, two in Cook Inlet and one each in 11 other regions, some of which have never had any lease sales. The Obama administration closed most federal Arctic waters to oil and gas leasing in late 2016, placing the entire Chukchi Sea off-limits and all but a 2.8mn-acre strip of territory relatively close to shore in the Beaufort Sea.

The new leasing plan would enter effect in 2019 and run until 2024. The plan will be subject to a 60-day public comment period, and a series of public hearings on the plan are set to be held before a final version is released.

Meanwhile, a new report from the US Geological Survey suggests the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and nearby state- and Alaska Native-owned lands on the western part of Alaska's North Slope could hold at much as 8.7bn barrels of technically recoverable oil and 25tn cf of gas (associated and non-associated).