The Trump administration said Thursday that it would sell oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska in early January, further accelerating its last-ditch effort to allow drilling there.
The Bureau of Land Management said the sale would take place Jan. 6, after the publication next Monday of a notice of sale in the Federal Register. That notice requires a 30-day comment period before a sale can occur.
The announcement of a sale date was made just 16 days after the bureau released a "call for nominations," which allowed oil companies and others to detail which tracts in the refuge were of interest for drilling.
Normally, a call for nominations allows at least 30 days for such responses, followed by weeks of analysis by the bureau to ultimately decide which tracts will be offered. That time frame would have pushed a sale to just a few days before, or beyond, the Jan. 20 inauguration of Joe Biden, who has opposed drilling in the refuge.
The announcement from the bureau's Alaska offices did not mention why the timetable had been accelerated. But the Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to sell drilling rights in the refuge before leaving office.
Environmental groups denounced the last-minute push.
Once the sale is held, the bureau has to review and approve the leases, a process that typically takes months. But holding the sale Jan. 6 potentially gives the bureau opportunity to finalize the leases before Inauguration Day. That would make it more difficult for the Biden administration to undo them.
The plan to sell leases is also the subject of four lawsuits filed by environmental organizations, some Alaska Native groups and, in one case, a coalition of 15 states. The lawsuits contend that the Trump administration took shortcuts in the leasing process and that an environmental review was deeply flawed.