Sierra Club Statement on Interior's Sellout of Western Arctic

WASHINGTON - This week, the Trump administration finalized a plan to open up millions of acres of fragile landscapes in the Western Arctic to oil and gas drilling.

The Department of the Interior published a proposed rule in the Federal Register revoking protections for much of the Western Arctic. The final rule will be published on November 17. Totaling more than 23 million acres in size, the Western Arctic is the largest contiguous area of national public lands in the United States.

The Department first announced its proposal to vastly increase oil and gas drilling in the Alaskan landscape in June, limiting public input to a 60-day comment period on the plan.

Since retaking the White House, Donald Trump has consistently acted to give away public lands to corporate polluters and oil and gas firms. Multiple Day One executive orders rolled back protections to make it easier for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands. Trump’s budget reconciliation law supercharged this pro-polluter giveaway, returning royalty rates oil and gas companies must pay for using public lands to levels originally set in the 1920s.

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/sierra-club-statement-on-interiors-sellout-of-western-arctic