Former President Donald Trump pledged to unleash American energy production with new oil and gas operations approved in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
In a Monday night interview on X with platform CEO Elon Musk, Trump promised to get oil and gas production on Alaska’s north slope up and running “quickly” four years after President Joe Biden suspended plans for drilling.
“I’ll get it going very quickly because not only is it big for Alaska,” Trump said, but also “for the United States.” It’s “pure, really good stuff.”
The Republican president had previously opened the 1.6-million-acre stretch on Alaska’s north coast for oil and gas development through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The administration issued the first leases to drill in ANWR’s coastal plain on Trump’s final full day in office before Biden halted projects and ultimately terminated the leases last summer.
Drilling along the 1.6 million acres of the nearly 20-million-acre refuge has remained a political football for decades, with Republican administrations repeatedly failing against Democrats to bring oil and gas production to communities within what is known as the 1002 Area. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that below the surface of an area roughly the size of South Carolina lie between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If successful, the region, just 60 miles from where companies have been drilling for decades with minimal environmental impact in Prudhoe Bay, could become the most productive oil field in the country.
William Shughart, a research director of the Independent Institute and professor at Utah State University, wrote in 2017 “the potential daily peak production there, 1.4 million barrels per day, is more oil than the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia.”
“We were going to drill,” Trump said Monday, “and we were going to make so much money, we were going to supply Europe with oil.”
“President Trump gets it,” said Rick Whitbeck, the Alaska state director for the energy non-profit Power the Future. “Alaska is a key piece of America’s energy security, and ANWR’s development is a key piece of Alaska’s energy future. When Congress authorized ANWR development in 2017, they understood that.”
Biden shut down Arctic oil and gas operations as part of the administration’s broader campaign to aggressively lock off 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waterways by 2030 in an initiative known as “30 for 30” — primarily targeting Alaska. Last year, the Department of the Interior blocked another roughly 16 million acres in Alaska from new opportunities for oil and gas development and issued more regulations against oil exploration in 13 million acres of the state in April.
States in the Lower 48, meanwhile, particularly in New Mexico, have suffered from the Biden administration’s suspension of oil and gas leases on federal land under a moratorium lasting more than a year. The Navajo Nation, however, was denied the opportunity to develop its own oil and gas reserves in New Mexico in a decision provoked by a rival tribe that is now the subject of an ethics complaint against the Department of the Interior.
Musk, who founded the electric car company Tesla, said in the Monday night interview politicians make a mistake when they vilify the oil and gas industry.
“If we were to stop using oil and gas right now,” Musk said, “we would all be starving, and the economy would collapse.”
The Tesla CEO argued industries have more time than the leftist consensus would suggest innovating new technologies that can replace finite resources in the future.
“We don’t need to rush,” Musk said, “and we don’t need to stop farmers from farming or prevent people from having steaks.”
