(Reuters) – The Trump administration on Thursday said it would issue a sale notice for oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge next week, putting it on track to hold an auction shortly before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The notice will be published next week and a sale will be held on Jan. 6 via video livestream, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said in a statement. Biden, a Democrat who is opposed to drilling in the area, will assume the presidency on Jan. 20.
The announcement comes a little more than two weeks after Trump’s Republican administration issued a request to energy companies to identify what specific land areas in the refuge should be offered for sale. The companies have 30 days to respond, and a sale notice was not expected to be issued until the end of that period.
“The Trump Administration is hell bent on selling off the Arctic Refuge on its way out the door, rules be damned,” Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said in an emailed statement.
Drilling had been banned in the refuge for decades before Republican-led tax legislation signed in 2017 removed that ban. Lawmakers in Alaska have long pushed to open up the ecologically sensitive area to oil and gas exploration.
Bureau of Land Management officials were not immediately available to comment on the timeline.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chris Reese)
