The Obama administration is rushing to get a flurry of priorities done before Donald Trump takes office. One of those items was a five-year lease plan from the Department of Interior, for the years 2017 through 2022, which includes territories the federal government plans on auctioning off for oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf. On November 18, Interior released its plan , and notably absent from the plan was acreage in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, a sign that President Obama wants to wall off those areas from future development. The proposed five-year plan includes 11 potential lease sales across four areas – three in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet in Alaska, which is off of Alaska’s southern coast; the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off of Alaska’s northern coast – the areas the oil industry hopes to eventually drill – were […]