For this purpose, the Ministry of the Interior wanted to release up to 82 percent of the so -called National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska for leasing, the minister said. The more than 630,000 hectares in the northwest of Alaska is known for resource wealth and extensive landscapes.
In addition, a program is to be reissued, among other things, with which a extensive protected area on the coasts of the state would be available for the development of oil and gas. Environmental protection groups are expected to contest the steps of the Republican government.
The former government under the democratic President Joe Biden had banned oil and gas bores in many parts of Alaska. Democrats and Republicans have been fighting Alaska’s development for decades, which has massive occurrence of fossil fuels and large untouched natural landscapes.
Right after his return to the White House, US President Donald Trump had signed a decree that bears the title “Exchange Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential”. In it, he instructed the Ministry of the Interior to eliminate the environmental protection measures ordered among bidges and ex-President Barack Obama and to accelerate permits for energy projects on Alaska’s national areas.
The Ministry of the Interior is now implementing this. Another project announced by Interior Minister Burgum is the reversal of a decision of Biden not to continue the Ambler Road project. This is the construction of a more than 300 kilometer road that was to open up new mining areas and would lead through a national park.
“Drill, baby, drill” (“Bohr, Baby, Bohr”) belonged to Trump’s campaign logans. In his victory speech, the Republican praised his country’s oil and gas deposits as “liquid gold”.
Trump is also committed to reviving an old gas pipeline project in Alaska. The idea is to promote natural gas there and to transport 1300 kilometers away to the south coast through a pipeline and convert it into LNG, which can then be shipped to Asia.
Burgum is not only the interior minister, he was also determined by Trump to become the head of a newly created national energy rate. He was commissioned to expand all forms of energy production.
