With only a few days remaining in his presidency, Joe Biden took one more parting shot at the oil and gas industry — and Alaska Natives — Thursday. The Department of Interior recommended that approximately 3 million more acres in Alaska’s 23-million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) region be protected from development. The announcement also provides direction for additional protections for impacts to “subsistence use,” which are areas used by Alaska Natives for traditional fishing and hunting.
“This is just another slap in the face as Biden heads out the door. It was always about pushing his radical agenda and propping up his eco-elitist friends,” Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, an energy advocacy group, told Just the News.
Indigenous voices
While presented as an expansion of protections for Alaska Native traditions, native communities in the North Slope have long been critical of the Biden-Harris administration’s attacks on oil and gas in the region, which they say provide needed economic development. Besides the jobs the industry provides, the tax revenues support infrastructure development in an area that previously had little.
“The Biden administration is selectively citing Indigenous voices, while ignoring wide swaths of the North Slope Iñupiat, and fails to understand the implications of this announcement. Instead, it listened to voices that agreed with its policy agenda to justify its actions while ignoring the overwhelming majority of North Slope residents and locally elected leaders who opposed today’s decision,” Nagruk Harcharek, President of the Voice of Arctic Iñupiat (VOICE), said in a statement.
The VOICE, which represents 21 communities and companies in the North Slope, spent years trying to gain an audience with Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, only to have her continually ignore their requests. Finally in June, Haaland met with representatives of the VOICE.
Hellbound and Down 