The Trump administration is proposing to loosen the regulation of offshore Arctic oil drilling by revoking several safety regulations put in place during the Obama administration.
The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Aug. 3 that it will propose a new rule to change what it called “a burdensome regulatory framework” imposed a decade ago on oil development in federal Arctic waters.
In a statement, Interior officials said the move would encourage oil development in the region.
The proposal drew immediate criticism from one environmental group.
“There’s no such thing as safe drilling in the Arctic Ocean, and that’s why it should never, never happen,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Having these very stringent rules and regulations to protect the Arctic and avoid catastrophe is the bare minimum.”
Arctic conditions, that feature shifting sea ice, harsh weather and remoteness, make oil spill response virtually impossible — and they make oil exploration impractical, Freeman said.
“It’s incredibly expensive, risky, dangerous, uncertain,” he said. Alternatively, leaders could be developing renewable energy infrastructure now, but “that’s not what our federal or state leadership are focusing on, and it’s just hurting our environment, hurting the climate and hurting the pocketbooks of Alaskans.”
The proposal will be published in the Federal Register and subject to a 90-day public comment period after that, the Department of the Interior said in its statement.
There has been only sporadic oil exploration drilling in federal waters of the Arctic in past decades, and there has never been any oil produced from there or any part of the federally managed outer continental shelf Alaska except for a small part of the Northstar field, which is located mostly on state territory.
There has been no oil production in Canadian Arctic waters, either. Oil development in Canadian Arctic waters has been barred under a moratorium imposed in 2019.
The Department of the Interior announcement is the latest episode in a back-and-forth pattern of Arctic oil policy.
The Obama-era rule standardized some requirements that had been applied to Shell’s multibillion-dollar exploration program in the early 2010s in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
That rule included a requirement that each operator have a designated backup drill rig to be available to respond to a well blowout and an integrated operating plan with steps to be taken and equipment to be used in the event of emergencies such as oil spills and extreme weather events.
The Obama-era rule went into effect in 2016, after Shell abandoned its failed offshore Arctic program.
The first Trump administration tried to loosen those Obama-era requirements. In a proposed rule released in 2020, the administration said it intended to relax the relief-well requirement and eliminate the requirement for an integrated operating plan among other changes.
That first Trump administration rule never went into effect. The Biden administration in 2021 rescinded the proposal, keeping the Obama-era rules in place.
The new Trump proposal, like the proposal in the first Trump term, seeks to relax the relief-well requirement and eliminate the requirement for an integrated operating plan, according to the Department of the Interior statement.
The attempt to loosen Arctic drilling rules comes as the Trump administration is pushing to expand oil development in that remote region.
The administration’s draft five-year outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing plan calls for numerous lease sales in federal Arctic waters, along with several lease sales in the Bering Sea and Bering Strait region.
The Alaska Beacon is an independent, donor-funded news organization. Alaskabeacon.com.
