The passage of Public Law 115-97 in December 2017 required the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to administer a competitive oil and natural gas program for the leasing, development, production, and transportation of oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Prior to the Trump Administration’s decision to open up the area, the ANWR was essentially under a drilling moratorium. The ANWR is located on the northern coast of Alaska, east of Prudhoe Bay and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA). The coastal plain covers 1.5 million acres and is about eight percent of the total area of the ANWR. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that this area held about 10.4 billion barrels of oil. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), ANWR production probably couldn’t begin until 2031 because of the time needed to acquire leases, explore the area, and develop the necessary […]