Senate lawmaker urges nullifying Biden administration's coastal plain oil-and-gas program

A lawmaker on the Senate floor introduced Senate Joint Resolution 91 (SJR 91) and said a companion House Joint Resolution 131 (HJR 131) would be used to nullify the Biden administration's coastal plain oil-and-gas program.

The lawmaker said the Alaska delegation filed the measures to overturn what they view as an administration effort to curtail resource production across Alaska. "These resolutions would nullify the Biden administration's coastal plane oil and gas program," the lawmaker said, and announced a motion to proceed later in the day and a scheduled final vote on the House resolution the next day.

The speaker framed the dispute around the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he described as a roughly 1.56 million-acre tract on Alaska's North Slope that Congress set aside for possible energy exploration under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). He said Congress reserved the 1002 area for energy purposes and later directed limited development in 2017, placing a surface-development cap of 2,000 acres and requiring at least two areawide lease sales within seven years.

Citing prior federal work, the lawmaker praised the Department of the Interior's multi-year environmental review that resulted in a 2020 record of decision designed to allow limited development while protecting wildlife and subsistence uses. He also cited an estimate of about 7.7 billion barrels of oil in the coastal plain and said that amount could support pipeline throughput and state revenue for decades.

The lawmaker sharply criticized the administration's later actions, saying President Biden suspended the program, paused leasing, cancelled leases and then issued a 2024 Record of Decision that he said contradicts federal law and makes leasing largely impractical. He said the 2024 plan reduced the acreage conceptually available for leasing, restricted seismic surveying, reinterpreted the statutory 2,000-acre surface limit as a discretionary range and added new stipulations designed to dissuade bidders.

"They flipped that on their head," the lawmaker said of the administration's approach, and he asserted that Interior's preferred alternative in 2024 projected nearly an 80% decline in future production from the coastal plain. He said the administration's cancellation of leases was challenged in court and, as he described it, found unlawful.

The lawmaker urged colleagues to support the motion to proceed to SJR 91 and the underlying disapproval resolution, saying passage would "restore the rule of law" and require federal agencies to follow congressional direction while allowing a narrowly limited surface-development footprint. At the close of remarks he sought unanimous consent to include letters of support from North Slope residents and industry groups; the matter was entered without objection. The clerk then reported a motion to invoke closure on the floor action, to be acted on in due course.

Next steps: the Senate is set to consider the motion to proceed later; the lawmaker said the companion House resolution could go to the president's desk the following day if the Senate proceeds.