Biden Limits Oil Drilling Across Alaska’s Petroleum Reserve
- New curbs on oil development to affect existing leases there
- Activists call safeguards key to protect caribou and birds
This article is for subscribers only.
The Biden administration on Friday finalized a plan to prevent oil development across more than half of the US government’s mammoth petroleum reserve in Alaska and set the stage to block road construction essential to opening a copper mine in the state.
The twin moves are among a string of actions by President Joe Biden to curtail extractive development on federal lands and wall off more than 41 million acres for conservation. They come as Biden seeks to garner support from young, climate-minded voters with his record safeguarding land and combating global warming, after disappointing some last year by authorizing Conocophillips’s massive Willow oil project.