RE: Petroleum News9 Jul 2021 12:54
More snippets from PN
Alaska sues Biden administration
ON JULY 7, THE 63RD ANNIVERSARY of the signing of the Alaska Statehood Act, Alaska Gov. Mike
Dunleavy announced the State of Alaska is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior for “illegally and unjustifiably extending decades-long restrictions on nearly 28 million acres of federal land in Alaska.” The action by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “blocks state land selections and Alaska Native Vietnam Veteran allotments,” the governor’s press release said.
“This is a methodical effort by the Biden administration — more than just bureaucratic foot dragging — to frustrate ANILCA and the Statehood land entitlement and leave these lands locked up as de facto parks,” said Dunleavy. “They are consciously ignoring and going around appropriate processes to hold things in perpetual limbo. It has needed to be challenged for a long time and it needs to be challenged now more than ever due to these new delays — and I am challenging
it. The intent of ANILCA matters, these unnecessary withdrawals need to be lifted, and we need to finally move this process forward. This is another federal attempt to deny Alaska the full realization as a state promised under our Statehood Compact, and it should not stand.”
The Dunleavy administration contends that the withdrawals have prevented Alaska from exercising its Statehood right to claim valuable lands or assess the natural resources on these lands.
Under a 1971 federal law, the secretary could issue temporary land withdrawals to restrict the use of federal land in Alaska to allow Interior time to determine how federal lands should be used in the state. Many of these 1970s-era orders have never been lifted even though the “reasons for the withdrawals have been satisfied for decades,” Dunleavy’s press release said.
Under 16 such orders, about 28 million acres of land have “sat under outdated restrictions, all the while with the federal government proposing that the withdrawals be lifted but never doing so.”
In 2006, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management reported to Congress that the temporary withdrawals “could be lifted on over nearly all these areas without
affecting the public interest. Following that report, BLM has completed numerous, multi-year reviews and land-use plans, each recommending that the withdrawals be lifted. In January of this year, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued orders based on these extensive analyses to finally lift these 16 land withdrawals from about 28 million acres,” the Dunleavy release said.
Shortly after assuming office, however, President
Biden’s new Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, announced she was unilaterally repealing Secretary
Bernhardt’s actions from taking affect for at least two years, explaining that Interior needed to conduct even more analyses of environmental, endangered species, historical preservation, and military land use laws — analyses that “BLM, itself, said it had already completed or were unn
Sign In
Follow the stocks
