The Biden administration’s choice to keep millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness off limits to oil drilling and important mineral mining was criticized by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). He said the actions were “national security suicide.”
“Well, there are no rules. He doesn’t have the power to do it… “You know what I mean when I say it’s national security suicide,” Sullivan said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Alaska and the federal government have had a long-running disagreement over how to use and protect Alaska’s huge natural resources. This is especially true when a Democrat is in the White House.
The Bureau of Land Management in the Interior Department officially said on Friday not to build the 211-mile-long Ambler Road, which would have allowed mining to grow into an undeveloped part of the state. This means that the project is over and zinc and copper deposits can’t be reached.
It also put out a final rule that says new oil and gas leases will not be allowed in the U.S. Arctic Ocean, 11 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, or nearly 3 million acres of government waters off the coast of Alaska.
Environmental and conservation groups and some native tribes praised the Interior Department’s decision, but not all of them, Sullivan said Sunday.
Sullivan said that the leaders of the North Slope of Alaska were all against the president and Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland’s claim on Friday that they did this because the Alaska Native people, or indigenous people, on the North Slope of Alaska asked them to.
But some tribes in the area praised the choice made by the Biden administration and said the Trump administration did not talk to them before approving the project.
