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Alaskan Tribal Leaders Offer ‘Immense Gratitude’ To Trump For Killing Biden Oil Development Bans
Prominent community members of Alaska’s North Slope warmly welcomed top Trump administration officials last week while ripping into the prior administration led by former President Joe Biden.
A trio of Trump cabinet officials – Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright – traveled to northern Alaska last week to announce that Biden-era restrictions on oil development in the region would be rescinded. The cabinet officials met with North Slope residents in Utqiagvik, Alaska.
Inupiat tribal leaders and officials greeted the news enthusiastically, according to video of the meeting obtained by The Daily Wire.
“When we had a similar meeting with the former Secretary of the Interior, that rule was announced after everybody got on the plane and flew out,” said Josiah Patkotak, mayor of North Slope Borough. He added that the prior administration’s rule “was contrary to what the public comment was.”
“Here we are, full transparency from our own secretary, and I think that deserves another round of applause,” Patkotak said after Burgum announced the administration’s intent to scrap the Biden-era restrictions.
Last year, the Biden administration banned oil and gas exploration and drilling across 10.6 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska (NPRA), a reserve set aside decades ago by Congress for future oil development. The administration put tight restrictions on development on another roughly three million acres of the reserve. In total, over half of the roughly 23-million acre reserve was locked to development.
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“Our ask is the same as always: that the North Slope Inupiat be central to discussions and decisions about land use in our region,” said Rex Rock, Sr., the president and CEO of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.
“Under the previous administration, as you heard, there were many actions that undermined our people’s self-determination, ignored our voices, and negatively impacted our communities. Their 2024 rule, Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, was not supported by a single entity in our region – and they still chose to implement it,” he said.
“Our region opposed the 2022 NPRA integrated activity plan because it took 50% of the NPRA off the table for development, which impacts the ability of our region to provide services to our people and communities,” Rock added.
Charles Lampe, the current president of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, said that under the Biden administration, the North Slope and its residents “were under attack” by environmental groups. Groups such as The Wilderness Society have long pushed for federal restrictions on Alaska’s North Slope that would ban development and industry, even in the petroleum reserve.
“On Day 1, President Trump told the Fish and Wildlife Department to deny that request. And that was such an amazing thing for us to be able to see. And we were so proud of our president then because he made sure that our ancestral homelands weren’t going to be stolen, [but] protected,” Lampe said. “So, I really need to bring back this just immense gratitude to President Trump for that action.”
“If the other guy would have won,” said Lampe, refering to former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, “there’s no doubt in my mind that our homeland would have been stolen, and there’s nothing we could have done about it.”
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