Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration Approval For Arctic Alaska Oil Exploration Plan

By Yereth Rosen

(Alaska Beacon) -- Environmental and Native organizations on Thursday sued the Trump administration to try to overturn last month’s approval of an expansive oil-exploration program on the North Slope.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated federal laws when it gave the go-ahead to a ConocoPhillips plan for seismic surveys and exploration drilling this winter on federal lands in Arctic Alaska.

ConocoPhillips’ plans call for seismic surveys in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, along with four exploration wells and associated development. The exploration work is planned near ConocoPhillips’ huge Willow project, which is in development, and its Greater Mooses Tooth Unit, which is already producing oil.

The plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit are Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, the Center for Biological Diversity and The Wilderness Society. They are represented by the environmental law firm Earthjustice.

The lawsuit argues the approval violates the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, a 1976 law that mandates environmental protection in the reserve, and the Administrative Procedures Act, which concerns the public process for government decision and actions.

The planned program will cause serious environmental damage that will last for several years, including in areas around Teshekpuk Lake, the North Slope’s biggest lake, and the Colville River, known for its raptor populations and paleontological resources. Previous presidential administrations established protections for those sensitive habitats, including the calving site for the caribou herd named for the lake.

“The record shows the exploration program is likely to cause long-term harm to vegetation and soils that provide crucial habitat to caribou, birds, and a host of other wildlife in the Reserve, including to those within the Teshekpuk Lake and Colville River Special Areas,” the lawsuit said. “The exploration program is also likely to cause population-level impacts to the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd, and long-term harm to subsistent hunters and the communities that rely upon them for food security and health and wellbeing.”

The lawsuit faults the BLM and U.S. Department of the Interior for limiting public information about the proposal and, once the proposal was announced, restricting public comment to a mere seven days before concluding that the exploration work would pose no significant environmental harm.

Both the lack of public information and the conclusion were wrong, the plaintiffs said. In their lawsuit they cited expert testimony from Martha Raynolds, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, who said the seismic program would scar the tundra for more than 15 years.

“The company’s plans would crush sensitive Arctic tundra under 95,000-pound thumper trucks, disrupt caribou migration patterns and destroy our ability to enjoy these magnificent lands,” Matt Jackson, Alaska senior manager for The Wilderness Society, said in a statement. “With an administration bent on ignoring the public, our only choice is to turn to the court to defend these public lands for generations to come and ensure that our rural communities remain free to sustain our Alaskan way of life.”

Seismic surveys use sound waves to help map underground geologic structures. The work is done with vehicles that crisscross the surface. UAF experts have warned for years about the threats to tundra and permafrost from seismic surveys.

Nauri Simmonds, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, said the areas targeted for exploration are sensitive and should be protected from development.

“Even among our own Iñupiat relatives who support oil development, there is recognition that some places are too important to risk, too vital to our way of life to be sacrificed. ConocoPhillips’ exploration program is not only an assault on caribou and tundra — it is another chapter in the enfoldment of our people into systems designed to fracture us from within,” she said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a policy concerning pending litigation.

Dennis Nuss, a ConocoPhillips spokesperson defended the approvals and criticized the plaintiffs.

“These actions by the same groups that have historically used legal maneuvers to delay exploration and development in the Petroleum Reserve jeopardize hundreds of local jobs and adds unnecessary risk to investment in Alaska,” Nuss said. “We remain confident in the robustness of our plan and BLM’s permits and look forward to completing our work within Alaska’s limited winter exploration season.”

He did not comment on whether ConocoPhillips had started the winter program.

The Willow project, with an estimated 600 million barrels of oil reserves, is expected to start producing oil in 2029. It is slated to be the westernmost producing oil field on the North Slope. The development has been controversial, but its approval by the Biden administration in 2023 has survived legal challenges. Projected revenues to the state from Willow production are now far more modest than previously estimated, according to Alaska Department of Revenue officials.

Production at the Greater Mooses Tooth site started in 2018.