#ANWR is in Alaska

[roguekhajiit]

On Tuesday, Trump was in Flint, Michigan, talking about his energy policies. During his ramblings, he said:

"We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done in their first week. They terminated it. Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one out on it. It’s it’s you know, think about this between Bagram, between you go to Anwar, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up. We should be. We should have that air base. We should have that oil. We should have. We would have had a whole different country."

Full transcript here.

Does he not know that Bagram is in Afghanistan. Also, when did we give up ANWR? Is it no longer a part of Alaska? Is Alaska no longer a part of the USA? Did Russia take it back?

And what does he have against Ronald Reagan? The dude was president in the 80s, ffs.

Of course, articles were quick to point out his errors; that Bagram isn't the same as ANWR. It isn't even on the same continent.

But the comments were even funnier.

This one person in particular went on an unhinged rant about pronouns of all things. As if that is enough of a reason to excuse the 🍊 💩 from attending a geography class.

Sure, Susan, Xander's preferred pronouns are preventing your cult leader from attending a geography lesson. Until we do away with the evil alphabet mafia, our political leaders will never be able to educate themselves any further.

All jokes aside. Wasn't it not that long ago that MAGA was calling Biden unfit for the presidency because he had a stutter? According to the cultists, a president who can't speak clearly and concisely is unfit to lead our nation.

But my how the tables have turned. Now, their candidate is slurring words, forgetting words, forgetting who he's talking to, and unable to tell the difference between the Arctic and the Middle East.

Now, they are perfectly OK with having a leader who can't string together a coherent sentence because he paints himself orange and wears a wig.

[davidaugust]

Bagram is an airbase in Afghanistan, has little to do with the energy industry and the US state of Alaska is about 5,602 miles (9,015 km) from Afghanistan.

If he meant the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), he’s also wrong since it is estimated to have less than 12 billion barrels of oil while Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of 267 billion barrels.

He should be nowhere near any decisions made about military or energy; he apparently doesn’t have the ability to know what they are.

[mariacallous]

So Trump was talking about ANWR in Alaska, but called it Bagram, but might have meant Bakken, which is in North Dakota and also not anywhere near Saudi Arabia in terms of oil production/availability?

[lgstarr]

***ALERT***24 hours before Joe Biden announced he was cancelling all previously issued oil and gas leases in Alaska’s ANWR region, Saudi Arabia and Russia announced oil production limits would continue.  Oil prices spiked near $100/bbl and then Joe Biden amplifies the problem by cancelling previously sold oil and gas leases.There’s no other way to look at the timing here, other than to accept this is Joe Biden intentionally driving up the cost of domestic energy in the U.S. and creating as much pain as possible.

[naturalresourcestoday]

ANWR Protection Bill Introduced

A group of legislators has introduced a bill to protect Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. The bill, if enacted, would designate ANWR’s coastal plain as wilderness. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a Trump administration initiative approved by a Republican-dominated Congress, opened that portion of ANWR to fossil fuel development after decades of controversy…

[typhlonectes]

President Joe Biden imposed a “temporary moratorium” on all oil and gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge shortly after taking office on Wednesday, citing the “alleged legal deficiencies underlying the program” and the inadequacy of a required environmental review.

Biden’s move to slam the brakes on drilling in the northeast Alaska refuge is among a list of executive orders the newly-inaugurated president swiftly signed to undo actions by his predecessor.

Read Biden’s executive order tied to the Arctic refuge here...

[tomorrowusa]

The Biden administration has put an end to Donald Trump’s last minute attempt to allow oil drilling in a sensitive wildlife refuge in Alaska. 

In January, Mr Trump pushed ahead with the sale for the rights to drill for oil on around 5% of the refuge, just days before his presidential term ended.

Covering some 19 million acres (78,000 sq km) the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is often described as America's last great wilderness.

[ ... ]

During his campaign, Mr Biden pledged to protect the habitat.

"President Biden believes America's national treasures are cultural and economic cornerstones of our country," White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in a statement.

"He is grateful for the prompt action by the Department of the Interior to suspend all leasing pending a review of decisions made in the last administration's final days that could have changed the character of this special place forever," she added.

We don’t need to encourage fossil fuel production and consumption. And we certainly shouldn’t be sliming one of the last great large wilderness areas in the US in order to obtain outmoded fossil fuels

5 species that stand to lose the most if the US allows drilling in the Arctic Refuge

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is safe as long as there are pro-environment Democrats in the White House.

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

He Woke Mom Up by David & Shiela Glatz Via Flickr: Mother Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) and her daughter just wanted to take a nap. They had just crossed the channel after being hazed off the shore by humans. They were tired. However, the male cub was restless. He walked to the coast and checked out the humans in the boat, but they wouldn't come ashore to play with him. Here he went back to mom and climbed her back, of course waking her up. No rest for a busy and attentive mother bear.

[earthstory]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by National Geographic (@natgeo)

natgeo Video & stills - @andy_bardon /// A few wintery aerials from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This fragile ecosystem is home to more than 250 animal species and our team came across caribou, bears, foxes, and sheep while we were in the field collecting data. Tucked into the tax bill approved Wednesday by Congress is a provision that opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Jimmy Carter created the refuge in late 1980 and recognized, "Alaska's wilderness areas are truly this country's crown jewels..." With the stroke of a pen its future has just changed. /// I collected this footage as our bush plane flew deep into the heart of the Brooks Range to drop us off for a two week expedition. Swipe right to see some stills from our climbs on the highest peaks in the range. Our team used cutting edge technology to measure the rate of glacial change and to accurately measure the highest summits in the refuge. Our trip was made possible by a grant from @natgeo /// Follow @andy_bardon for more imagery of wild places

[beyondcrowds]

Creeping over the continental divide

Ivishak River Valley, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

[agentheyimnewhere]

ANWR has only ever had one test well drilled in it. That test was run in the 1980s and the results were never publicly released. The most common theory, though, is that any oil that is there is minimal. Therefore, drilling in the wildlife refuge has a high probability (from other studies) of doing damage without actually making profit from oil. The profits would come from the sale of the land—the land and rights could go for extremely high cost. There’s a lot more to the situation than that, but that’s one aspect.

As for Pebble Mine, I have never met an Alaskan who is for it. I have lived in AK my whole life and I have never met a single person who is from here that is for it. Not one. Nobody from Anchorage, Ketchikan, Fairbanks, Juneau, Soldotna, Palmer—and especially not people from places like Dutch Harbor or Unalaska who rely directly on the headwaters of Bristol Bay. I first heard of it by seeing ‘No Pebble Mine’ stickers at the state fair when I was in elementary school. We watched videos in class about it and how it would work from sources like the tribal elders, corporations, and fishing communities.

Corporations are trying to sell it as a job-creator and as something that would only cause damage if something went wrong. They try to make it seem like a beacon of industrialization in an area that has no desire to become a booming metropolis. Economic opportunity outweighs keeping Bristol Bay pristine?? Bullshit. Alaskans want to preserve our way of life. Our way of life, even as a white person who cannot speak as part of the native community, relies heavily on fish and wildlife in general. Our economy is basically tourism, oil, and fishing. We rely on renewable resources staying renewable. Oil is finite, responsibly managed fisheries and forests should not be.

Bristol Bay is not just fish. It is tradition, a home, a lifestyle, and a history. It is fishermen and processors, providing far reaching opportunities for jobs in the area and in places like anchorage. It supports and uplifts the Native Alaskans who have been there for ages.

This is the first I’ve heard of the Tongass issue, though, and that’s a problem. That means it’s not very visible in Alaskan media which is troubling. The Tongass is an amazing rainforest that most people don’t even know exists. Yes, folks, Alaska has a rainforest!!!!! And it’s really cool and important!!! Logging used to be common in the panhandle (Southeast) because of the Sitka Spruce trees, second only in size to redwoods. Can you imagine if logging was permitted in Redwood National Park? No? Then let’s support keeping the Tongass alive.

(Also, if you don’t know what Fat Bear Week is, look it up. It’s amazing. Truly.)

So as of July 9th, the Trump Administration has overturned environmental protection laws in Alaskan reserves, which includes allowing:

use bait including donuts and grease-soaked bread to draw in and kill brown bears;

use artificial lights to enter dens and kill black bears, including females and their cubs;

shoot caribou while they are swimming; and

trap and kill wolves and their pups during denning season

here’s one petition I’ve found about this, and I’ll be looking for more resources. Please circulate this so this information is well-known, because they’ve been sneakily messing with a LOT of environmental laws and practices

[mariacallous]

In an online conversation with Elon Musk on Monday,former PresidentDonald Trump said he’d swiftly reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling if he’s elected again.

Trump also suggested that the refuge in northeast Alaska could become one of the world’s top oil producers, even rivaling Saudi Arabia.

But the oil potential in the 19-million-acre refuge is not at all comparable to Saudi Arabia, though an official with the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday the Arctic Refuge coastal plain does contain significant pools of oil.

Trump, in the conversation on X, also blasted President Joe Biden’s administration for halting oil activity in the refuge, after the Trump administration issued exploration leases there in a lease sale in 2021 — though that sale generated few bids, including zero from major oil companies.

Before that, Alaska leaders and congressional Republicans long dreamed of seeing oil development in the refuge’s coastal plain, but conservation groups and many Democratic leaders successfully fended off those efforts for decades.

In the conversation with Musk, Trump said the refuge “could be bigger than Saudi Arabia. But they went in and they terminated it.”

“And I’ll get it going very quickly,” he said. “Because not only is it big for Alaska. I mean, you talk about economic development. That for the United States, I mean, that is, they say, bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size, and pure, really good stuff.”

However, OPEC estimates put Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves at well over 200 billion barrels of oil. It has produced well over 150 billion barrels of oil over time, OPEC figures show.

The refuge’s coastal plain, where the lease sale was held, contains an estimated fraction of that amount, or 10.4 billion barrels of “technically recoverable oil” on average, the Congressional Research Service reported this summer.

Dave Houseknecht, senior research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a leading expert on the topic, said ANWR’s oil potential is nowhere near Saudi Arabia’s.

“There’s no way,” Houseknecht said in an interview on Tuesday. “Not by any imagination.”

The Arctic refuge coastal plain estimates are based on a 1998 USGS report that Houseknecht helped develop. The USGS report was based on old 1980s seismic data that has not been updated by the federal government, he said.

Though it’s no Saudi Arabia, the report estimates that the refuge contains pools of oil that are comparable to large discoveries made in recent years in Alaska, far west of the refuge, Houseknecht said.

Some pools of oil could hold between 500 million to 750 million barrels of oil, Houseknecht said.

That puts them about the size of Willow, the controversial ConocoPhillips oil development that the Biden administration approved last year, and that climate activists called a “climate bomb.”

The biggest pools in the refuge might hold about 2 billion to 4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, Houseknecht said.

That’s about the size of a pool of oil associated with the Pikka field, which is largely located on state land, he said. The Pikka discovery hasn’t generated the same national attention as Willow.

Oil production in the refuge would nonetheless face economic hurdles, Houseknecht said.

While some of the oil accumulations there are big, they’re not all connected, he said.

“The simplest way to think about it is it’s not all one big pool (in the refuge) that can be readily developed from a single location,” he said. “So that would ding the economic aspects.”

“But it’s still economically viable because the 1002 area is not a big area. It’s 1.5 million acres,” he said, referring to the refuge’s coastal plain that’s often called the 1002 area.

Trump in 2017 took a major step toward potential drilling in the refuge.

He signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act after Alaska’s Republican delegation managed to add a provision for at least two lease sales in the refuge, a first.

But the federal government’s first-ever lease sale in 2021 indicated that — at least at the time — the oil industry had little interest in exploring the controversial area.

It came during a time of low oil prices, with many major banks saying they would not finance new Arctic oil and gas projects. And Joe Biden, the president-elect at the time, had said he opposed drilling in the refuge, another obstacle.

The sale produced a paltry $14.4 million in bids. That was a poor start to the federal government’s estimate that the two lease sales could generate $1.8 billion in revenue.

Only two small private companies submitted bids and later relinquished their leases under the Biden administration.

That left the main bidder, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. The state agency is suing after the Biden administration canceled its leases last year, saying the federal government did not properly conduct an environmental review before the lease sale.

Under the 2017 law, a second lease sale must be held before Dec. 22 of this year.

The Biden administration has said it will determine by the end of September how the refuge oil program will proceed.

Will the administration hold a lease sale in time?

“We will follow the law,” said Melissa Schwartz, a spokesperson with the Interior Department, in an email on Tuesday.

[notbeingnoticed]

On his first day in office, Mr. Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and halted new leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A week later, he banned new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, and in June he shut down exploration on existing leases in ANWR. In October, he increased the regulatory burdens on building pipelines and other infrastructure. This February he limited leasing in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. At every turn Team Biden has worked to restrict and reduce domestic oil and gas production.

[tabarronauthor]

Today is a very sad day for America. For today Republicans in Congress will pass the tax bill that opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development. This is a sacred place, where the world's largest caribou herd has grazed in peace for thousands of years, and it deserves protection for all time. But it fell to the Trump administration's goal, backed by Republican leaders, to sell out our most cherished public lands to the highest bidder. 

This vote breaks with a 150-year tradition of protecting America’s most iconic wild places -- from President Lincoln’s establishment of Yosemite National Park, to Theodore Roosevelt’s setting aside millions of acres for conservation, to Eisenhower’s establishment of the Arctic Range in 1960.

This fight is about something much greater than oil and gas. It's about WHO WE ARE as a people -- what we truly value most. One of America's greatest conservationists, Mardy Murie, who was a dear friend of mine, put it this way: "I hope that the United States of America is never so rich that she can afford to let these wildernesses pass by. Or so poor that she cannot afford to keep them." 

There's still hope. Groups like The Wilderness Society and Earthjustice are fighting hard to reverse this policy before drilling ever gets started. So don't lose heart. We can and will fight hard to protect again these sacred lands. Please join the fight and help however you can! 

 In the words of my friend Jamie Williams of The Wilderness Society: "What we do with the Arctic Refuge says everything about the soul of America... What we must do is turn the political will towards saving the last remaining wild places on earth – for people, for wildlife and for our climate. That's true nowhere more than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

[typhlonectes]

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Will Not Face Mass Oil Drilling—for Now

Large oil companies skipped out on the auction, but environmentalists say a worrisome precedent has been set

For the last 40 years, politicians, oil companies, environmentalists, and Indigenous peoples have clashed over whether or not the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—the largest stretch of intact wilderness in the United States—should be opened up for drilling. Now, that battle is finally coming to a close, reports Joel K. Bourne, Jr. for National Geographic.

The ANWR is located within the Arctic Circle in the northeastern corner of Alaska. It is home to an abundance of wildlife like polar bears and caribou, which the region's Indigenous communities rely on and hold sacred. But billions of barrels of oil may lurk beneath the icy surface, making the refuge a target for oil companies and pro-industry politicians, reports Emily Holden for the Guardian.

"If you can’t draw a line at the tundra and keep this one area of the Arctic off limits, then the question is, where can you draw the line and what protected part or wildlife refuge in the United States will remain off limits?" Adam Kolton, the executive director of the environmentalist Alaska Wilderness League, tells the Guardian.

President-elect Joe Biden has announced that he will protect the refuge from exploitation, and the Trump Administration has been racing to seal the deal and auction off parts of the refuge before the end of Trump's term on January 20, reports Andy McGlashen for Audubon...

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-not-face-mass-oil-drilling-180976708/