Biden Expands Ban on Oil and Gas Leasing in Northern Bering Sea of Alaska • Alaska Beacon

The entire Northern Bering Sea is now off-limits to oil and gas leasing, under a presidential directive announced on Monday.

President Joe Biden invoked his authority under a federal law to withdraw about 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea and other federal offshore areas from the Department of the Interior’s oil and gas leasing program.

An earlier action by President Barack Obama in 2016 established a Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area, with protections that put about half of the region off-limits to oil and gas leasing.Biden’s action under the Outer Continental Shelf Act added the rest of the designated climate resilience area to the no-leasing category.

Along with the Northern Bering Sea, Biden’s action affected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Atlantic was already under a leasing moratorium set to expire in 2032 absent Biden’s action. West Coast governors over the past decades have supported a leasing ban in federal waters of the Pacific. The last Pacific lease sale was in 1984, the White House said. In all, Biden’s actions banned leasing in over 625 million acres of U.S. ocean territory, the White House said.

Biden, in a statement, said the decision addresses local and regional concerns.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks. As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” Biden said in the statement.

Bering Sea tribal organizations, in a joint statement, praised Biden’s action.

“We thank President Biden for issuing these (withdrawals) and honoring over 40 years of Tribal advocacy to protect our food security and marine environment from oil and gas leasing. Kawerak region Tribes have opposed offshore oil and gas drilling in the Northern Bering Sea since the early 1980s. Tribes are the original stewards of the Northern Bering Sea. We depend on a healthy ocean, and we appreciate President Biden for partnering in this stewardship to protect our waters,” Mary David, executive vice president of Kawerak Inc., said in the statement. Kawerak is a Nome-based consortium representing Bering Strait-area tribes.

Vivian Korthuis, chief executive of the Association of Village Council Presidents, which represents tribes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, and Jaylene Wheeler, executive director of the Bering Sea Elders Group, also noted that their organizations have long opposed oil and gas development in the Northern Bering Sea.

“President Biden’s decision reflects a strong dedication to safeguarding natural resources that are vital to both our economy and ecosystems. His leadership in prioritizing sustainable practices ensures a healthier resilient future for us all,” Korthuis said in the statement.

While tribal opposition to oil and gas development in the region dates to the 1980s, the 112,300-square-mile Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area that was created by Obama’s executive action in December 2016 addressed some other concerns. The project had its roots in several years of organized opposition to bottom trawling in the Northern Bering Sea, according to Kawerak’s website. Bottom trawling, a fishing method that uses nets to sweep the ocean floor for certain groundfish species, is currently prohibited in the Northern Bering Sea.

The Bering Sea is among the fastest warming regions of the world, with well-known impacts to fish and marine wildlife, as well as to coastal communities experiencing more flooding and erosion. The ecosystem impacts were detailed in the 2019 Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The climate resilience area designation elevates tribal participation and Indigenous knowledge in federal management decisions in the Northern Bering Sea. Development and industrialization issues there largely concern commercial fishing, which is changing as stocks shift northward, and shipping, which is increasing as Arctic sea ice diminishes.

Cook Inlet, existing leases unaffected

Biden’s action does not affect Cook Inlet or any other parts of Alaska. It does not affect any existing leases, planned lease sales or ongoing development and production in the central or western Gulf of Mexico, where almost all U.S. offshore oil and gas is produced.

Nonetheless, U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, the state’s newly elected House member, invoked Cook Inlet in a social media post on Sunday that blasted the president.

“Joe Biden is a son of a bitch. Hundreds of thousands of Alaskans rely on natural gas from the Cook Inlet to heat and electrify their homes, churches, schools, and workplaces. Actions like this should serve as a permanent reminder that the Democrat machine is more than happy to sacrifice us all in the name of their sanctimonious, socialist-driven, climate science™ religion,” said the post on the site X.

While the Cook Inlet basin provides natural gas to the state’s Southcentral region, all of it comes from state territory and none has ever come from federal offshore areas.

On Monday, Begich issued a follow-up statement that reiterated his opposition.

“Executive actions impacting American resources taken under the cover of ‘climate resilience’ should be revoked, and it is my belief that actions that lock up American resource development should not be subject to executive fiat,” he said in the statement.

Most of the blame for low interest in oil leasing in federal offshore areas of Alaska should be attributed to “the adversarial positioning of federal bureaucracies,” he added.

The entire Bering Sea holds only negligible amounts of oil or natural gas that could be feasible to develop, according to a 2021 resource assessment published by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy. Sales in 1983 and 1984 for Bering Sea areas sold over 200 total leases, and a few wells were drilled shortly after. No development resulted.

There has never been any oil or natural gas produced from any federally managed outer continental shelf regions off Alaska, except for three federal leases in the Beaufort Sea that are part of the Northstar unit, an offshore oil field that is located mostly on state territory. Northstar was developed by BP in the 1990s and is now owned and operated by Hilcorp.

Whether Biden’s action can be reversed by President-elect Donald Trump is unclear.

Trump, in his first term, issued an executive order that sought to overturn Obama actions that barred leasing in most of Alaska’s offshore Arctic. The executive order also revoked the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area designation; Biden revived the designation in 2021.

The first Trump administration also proposed oil and gas lease sales in all offshore Alaska regions except for the North Aleutian Basin, which had been placed permanently off-limits to leasing years earlier. During the first Trump administration, the Alaska congressional delegation, then-Gov. Bill Walker, fishing organizations, the tribal governments and others asked the Trump administration to drop plans to sell oil leases in the Northern Bering Sea.

Those proposed Trump lease sales never happened. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in 2019 struck down the Trump administration’s attempts to use executive action to revoke the Arctic offshore leasing bans, as well as the Atlantic leasing ban that existed at the time. Gleason ruled that Obama’s withdrawals could be reversed only by Congress.