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U.S. Presidential Order Joe Biden on Jan. 20 said a new environmental study was needed to fix legal flaws in the probe program approved by the Trump administration.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is suspending oil and gas leases at the Alaska Arctic Wildlife National Refuge as it examines the environmental impacts of drilling in a remote region that has been the focus of a political struggle for decades. report on the administration plan.
The order from the U.S. Department of the Interior was to be released on Tuesday. Biden follows a provisional moratorium on oil and gas leasing activities imposed on the first day of office. Biden’s January 20 executive order suggested that a new environmental review should be conducted to correct legal errors in a probe program approved by Congress under the administration of former President Donald Trump.
People who reported the plan have requested anonymity because the plan has not been officially released.
The remote 19.6 million-acre shelter is home to polar bears, caribou, snow owls and other wildlife, including migratory birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been opening up to working to drill the wildlife sanctuary that Gwich’in considers sacred. Democrats, environmental groups, and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an agency of the Department of the Interior, held a lease sale for the shelter’s coastal plain two weeks before Biden took office. Eight days later the agency signed leases for nine departments of nearly 1,774 square miles (685 miles). However, the lease was not publicly announced until Jan. 19, during Trump’s last full-day term.
He has come out against drilling in the Biden region, and environmental groups have been pushing for definitive protections, which Biden called for in his presidential campaign.
The administration’s actions to suspend leases last week after officials despaired of environmental groups defended the Trump administration’s decision to approve a major oil project on the north side of Alaska. Critics say the action flies in the face of Biden’s commitments to tackling climate change.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in a court file that opponents of the Willow project, in the Alaska National Oil Reserve, wanted to halt the development by selecting federal agency records “cherry” to denounce violations of the environmental review law. The presentation advocates revisions based on last fall’s decision to approve project plans.
A coalition of groups has accused it of invalidating Trump’s time-standing acceptance. The appellate court suspended some construction activities earlier in the year, and the parties to the case later agreed to keep the construction activity limits until December 1, while the underlying case continued.
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