Selling Out the Arctic: Fossil Fuels, False Promises, and the Fight for Alaska's Future
By Dom Altomari and Erika Pietrzak, July 16 , 2025
Alaska’s Arctic is a vital, wild region that supports the climate and Indigenous communities. Oil projects like Willow threaten to release massive carbon pollution and damage fragile ecosystems. Recent political decisions are quickly undoing key environmental protections.
Source: NOAA
Introduction
Commonly referred to as “the Last Frontier,” Alaska is widely considered to be one of the last great wild places on Earth. Making up a vast and remote 20 percent of the United States, Alaska is uniquely characterized by its “treeless tundra, rugged Brooks Range, and dramatic Arctic coastline.” The state is home to a biodiverse array of flora and fauna, which has been crucial to sustaining Indigenous communities, particularly the Iñupiat and Gwich’in people, who have lived in harmony with the Arctic land and sea since time immemorial.
Beyond its breathtaking beauty, harshness, and cultural significance, the Arctic has historically played a critical role in global climate regulation. For eons, the Arctic has regulated global carbon levels by acting as a carbon sink, trapping excess carbon dioxide emissions and distributing them amongst its delicate ecosystems. However, the 2024 NOAA Arctic Report Card revealed that the Arctic “is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts.” This is largely due to increased global temperatures and the occurrence of wildfires. The state of Alaska is solely responsible for storing “an estimated 53 percent of the nation’s total carbon.” Increasing temperatures are correlated with the rise in permafrost temperatures. Higher temperatures have increased sea ice-melting speeds. Melt rates have been accelerating at a rate of about 13 percent per decade since 1979. Along the coast, sea levels are rising at about 1.5 meters per year, accelerating erosion and ecological disruption while threatening the surrounding wildlife and human communities alike.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is one of the largest protected areas of land in the world to still be undeveloped, entirely wild, and “relatively untouched.” In 1980, after decades of fighting, conservationists were awarded the 19.6 million acre corner of the northern Alaska coastline that is known today as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or the ANWR. Known to the Gwich’in people as “the sacred place where life begins,” the land is home to rich biodiversity adapted to sustain the fragile tundra ecosystems. The ANWR hosts vital migratory routes for an already dwindling population of caribou (the furthest of any land migration) and over 200 species of migratory birds (traveling from all 50 states and 6 different continents). Fifteen Native Alaska villages have lived on this land for thousands of years and rely on it for subsistence hunting, cultural practices, and survival.
In 2025, the Arctic faces a new threat: the Trump administration’s declaration of a “national energy emergency.” As promised in Trump’s inaugural address to “drill, baby, drill” in the hopes of producing more oil and gas on U.S. soil, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has proposed plans that would allow for oil and gas drilling on 82 percent of the public lands within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, opening up a total of 18.5 million acres including 11 million acres that have been designated as Special Areas due to ecological sensitivity. Drilling in Alaskan lands will cause irreversible immediate and long-term harm to an ecosystem already suffering climate crisis-induced ecological disruption at a rate that is four times faster than the rest of the Earth.
Modern Brief History
In February of 2013 the Obama Administration released the Integrated Activity Plan and Environmental Impact Statement for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska which saved 11 million acres of land across Alaska from development. However, under the plan 12 million acres of land are still available for oil and gas leasing, and 14 million acres open for oil and gas infrastructure, such as pipelines. The Plan also set to create “special areas” that do “not itself impede oil and gas development” but rather “indicate to managers and the public the importance of certain lands and the need to consider carefully the appropriate protection of surface resources.” The Plan also protects 7.3 million acres of land in Southwestern Alaska “that are essential for calving and summer migration of caribou.”
Under the first Trump administration, the largest lease sale in the history of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) occurred, with 10.3 million acres made available. A series of challenges to the decision were placed by environmental groups in Alaska and around the country, to no avail. Three years later, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) adjusted the 2020 Final Integrated Activity Plan, which forced the opening of 82 percent of the total NPR - A–an increase of 18.7 million acres. This included opening the entire Teshekpuk Lake Special Area to oil and gas leasing. The area is one of the most important goose molting habitats in the Arctic, which is home to a 40,000-head Teshekpuk Caribou Herd and the state’s largest lake–as well as a vital habitat for several endangered species. These decisions contribute more harm than good, ultimately prioritizing short-term resource extraction over the long-term integrity of a key carbon sink and an incredibly fragile ecosystem.
On their first day in office, under former President Biden, the Acting Interior Secretary issued Secretarial Order 3395, temporarily suspending all onshore oil and gas leasing in Alaska. In 2022, the BLM restored the 2013 Obama Administration's Integrated Activity Plan and Environmental Impact Statement for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, minimizing the total Alaskan land available in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) for oil and gas exploration back down to 52 percent and re-creating “special areas.” The following year, former President Biden withdrew approximately 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea from oil and gas leasing adjacent to the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.
In 2024, the BLM issued a final rule that opened 11.8 million acres to oil and gas leasing “subject to additional conditions.” This included requiring companies to offset “reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects” of drilling proposals and including Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) “when evaluating resources for the designation, de-designation, and management of ‘special areas.’”
Not all of the Biden administration's actions were positive for Alaska’s environment. In 2022, the BLM defended its decision under the Trump administration to open oil and gas exploration in the Peregrine oil prospect. The same year saw the ConocoPhillips Company experience a significant gas leak that occurred after the company failed to properly enclose its disposal well with cement, resulting in 7.2 million cubic feet of natural gas leaking into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of Alaskans.
The Willow Project
Under the first Trump Administration, the Willow Project from ConocoPhillips was approved by the BLM to produce 590 million barrels of oil over 30 years in Alaska (which could be closer to three billion barrels by ConocoPhillip’s own estimates), including by permafrost. The massive 8-million USD oil drilling project on federally protected land caused uproars from environmentalists across the world. The project was called “downright climate sabotage” by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
In 2021, under the Biden Administration, the District Court for the District of Alaska issued an order blocking ConocoPhillips from breaking ground on the Willow Project. One week later, the issue was extended to prevent breaking ground on the Willow Project through the duration of the lawsuit. This decision was based on the idea that the Trump Administration’s “review failed to fully account for the project’s climate impacts, failed to provide adequate protection for the Teshekpuk Lake special area, and didn’t specify how polar bears would be protected.”
However, in 2023, the BLM approved three of the Willow Project’s five proposed drill sites, abandoning the consideration of the fourth site. The approved sites “include associated infrastructure, consisting of a processing facility, a natural gas-fired power plant, operations center, airstrip, and gravel roads.” The approved sites will fragment the NPR-A, the largest intact public land in the United States, with cascading ecological effects. The NRDC said that the Biden administration’s approval of this project will worsen the already existing problems of melting permafrost, sea ice, and increase in coastal erosion. The claims brought by environmental and Alaska Native groups challenging the Willow Project were dismissed by the District Court for the District of Alaska.
To mitigate the impacts of the Willow Project, one million acres of the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area would be designated for conservation in an agreement between the BLM and a non-profit corporation formed by the Native Village of Nuiqsut, Kuukpik Corporation, and the City of Nuiqsut. This agreement was intended to protect the caribou herds that would be damaged by the Willow Project.
However, this attempt may ultimately prove futile. The Willow Project will release the equivalent of 260 million metric tons of carbon pollution over its lifetime, equivalent to the emissions of two million gas-burning cars. This resulted in the NRDC calling Biden’s approval of part of this project “green-lighting a carbon bomb.” These figures are only made worse by the required hundreds of miles of road and pipeline infrastructure that would need to be built for the project’s fulfillment. Some estimates have the destruction of the project spanning across 532 acres of wetlands, 619 acres of habitat disturbance for polar bears, and more than 17 thousand acres of habitat disruption for birds.
Current Presidential Actions
On his first day in office in2025, President Trump issued an executive order entitled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” This order directed the BLM to reverse the Biden administration’s management strategy in Alaska and the 2024 decision that included TEK and special areas. The order also temporarily suspended all active efforts based on the 2013 and 2022 Integrated Activity Plans. The secretarial order from the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum “called for an action plan to expedite permitting and leasing for Alaska’s energy projects and reinstated a directive from the first Trump administration to develop a revised Integrated Activity Plan for the NPR-A.”
In early June, the BLM issued a proposed rule to reopen 30 percent of the NPR - A that the Biden administration closed. This proposal also reverses the requirement to offset environmental impacts. If it passes, the NPR - A “would be subject to the prior management rules finalized in 1977.” None of these actions are surprising, as they were laid out in Project 2025 ahead of the election. However, the brief comment period of just two weeks and the speed of these changes is unprecedented in the NPR - A. The drilling plans are still under previous protections and the public comment period is currently open.
Alaska and “the Lower 48” Take Action
In 2019 the population of Alaska was 731,007 residents, coming in at a whopping 0.2 percent of the total U.S. population. While local conservation organizations are doing all that they can to campaign in opposition of these massive proposed federal projects, several other national environmental justice groups have joined in the fight alongside Indigenous Alaskans and activists. The most notable action being taken is Northern Alaska Environmental Center v. Trump as a “challenge to President Trump's executive order reversing President Biden’s withdrawals of certain areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans and Gulf of Mexico from future oil and gas development.”
Take Action
Public assistance is a crucial line of defense. Here’s how you can help:
Comments on the BLM proposal are due August 4, 2025
Sign on to Action Network’s petition to stop the Willow Project
Sign on to change.org’s petition to stop the Willow Project
Sign on to Action Network’s petition to end Arctic drilling
Stop Trump’s Plan to Open Alaska’s Wild Lands to Oil Drilling
Sign on to Stop the destruction of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Add your name to a letter from Protect the Arctic
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