UTQIAGVIK, Alaska—Interior Secretary Doug Burgum delivered welcome news to a roomful of Alaska Natives on Sunday evening: The Trump administration will take action to rescind a Biden-era climate rule that locked up millions of acres from future oil and gas development.
Burgum made the unexpected announcement in Utqiagvik, Alaska—America’s northernmost community and home to the Inupiat people—flanked by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, fellow members of President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council. At Burgum’s direction, the Interior Department will initiate a formal rulemaking process Monday morning to rescind the regulations.
The action, if eventually finalized, would remove restrictions former president Joe Biden unveiled on Earth Day 2024, blocking development across 13 million acres of federal lands in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve—an area Congress specifically set aside for development decades ago. The Biden administration went through with the restrictions despite vigorous opposition from Alaska Natives, many of whom were present at the town hall event in Utqiagvik on Sunday evening.
“The three of us have a charge—it’s our jobs in our respective departments to go and execute on unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary potential,” Burgum remarked to applause.
Many of the administration’s energy-related actions thus far have been via executive action, which make them vulnerable to court injunctions and reversal by future Democratic administrations. By opting for a formal rulemaking process, Burgum’s approach on the issue could provide more changes to Biden-era actions that conflict with Trump’s agenda.
The announcement also reaffirms Trump’s commitment to making Alaska a centerpiece of his commitment to “drill, baby, drill” and accelerate domestic oil and gas development. On his first day in office, Trump ordered Burgum to pursue aggressive drilling and mining opportunities in Alaska.
The trip to Utqiagvik, meanwhile, represents a historic milestone—it is both the National Energy Dominance Council’s first joint trip since the president formed it in February and it is the first time the leaders of the Interior Department, Energy Department, and EPA have traveled to Alaska’s North Slope Borough in tandem.
“It means they’re listening,” Utqiagvik mayor Asisaun Toovak told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview. “They are taking the time to come here, 3,000 miles up north, to listen to our Indigenous voices and hear our right to self determination as an Inupiat people. They’re listening, they’re hearing us, and they’re making a real effort.”
In addition to Toovak, several leaders from Utqiagvik and other communities in the North Slope Borough attended the town hall Sunday in support of the delegation’s agenda. “I want to say, in the words of our commander-in-chief, President Donald J. Trump, drill, baby, drill,” exclaimed Charles Lampe, a leader from Kaktovik, Alaska.
While the region is remote, it contains some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the country. Continued development of those reserves could help supply the rest of the country and allies abroad with much-needed cheap energy while helping to boost the economies of the surrounding impoverished Native villages like Utqiagvik and Kaktovik, which are reliant on such projects for much-needed tax revenue.
That is why Alaska Natives overwhelmingly support more oil and gas drilling projects. The Biden administration ultimately ignored their pleas and instead took the side of powerful environmental groups that argue for more restrictions on development to curb greenhouse gas emissions and protect wildlife.
In doing so, Biden locked up more than 28 million acres of lands in the National Petroleum Reserve and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He also shut down drilling off the coast of northern Alaska.
“What we need from the federal government is to empower [the Inupiat] to make commercial deals and develop resources as they see fit,” Energy Secretary Wright told the Free Beacon. “Of course they’re going to care about the land and the animals—they don’t want to hurt their environment. They want to be here for another 10,000 years.”
“This mistake that people 5,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., are going to be the ones that are going to protect the land here—no, that’s going to be done by the people here,” he said.
EPA administrator Zeldin echoed those comments, reiterating that the United States can protect the environment while simultaneously pursuing development to boost the local and national economies.
“I think it would be the height of insanity for our country to hold ourselves back from unleashing energy prosperity and dominance at a time like now,” Zeldin told the Free Beacon. “The idea that we should be restricting our own people, our own future, because it is a binary choice and the only option is to suffocate the economy is just such a wildly nuts concept that the Trump administration obviously isn’t going to play along with.”
