Tag: juneau

By: Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon

The Trump administration on Friday affirmed a controversial federal Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale held at the end of 2022, asserting that impacts to endangered beluga whales and other resources were adequately considered and no changes in the leasing plan are needed.

In a Federal Register notice scheduled to be published on Monday, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced its decision to uphold Lease Sale 258 as held. The decision “balances the national policies mandated by Congress to expeditiously and safely develop the natural resources of the (Outer Continental Shelf), subject to environmental safeguards, in a manner that is consistent with the maintenance of competition and other national needs,” the notice said.

The lease sale, mandated by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, offered 193 blocks over nearly 1 million acres, but it drew only one bid. The sole bid was from Hilcorp, the dominant oil and gas operator in the inlet.

The auction went through a tumultuous history and remains a subject of debate.

Planning for the sale started in 2020, but two years later, the Biden administration canceled it, citing a lack of industry interest. The sale was resurrected by a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that was inserted by then-Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia. That provision required Lease Sale 258 to be held by the end of 2022; it was ultimately held on Dec. 30 of that year.

Environmental groups that sued to block the sale secured a victory after it was held. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled in July 2024 that pre-sale studies failed to properly analyze impacts to endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales and other resources. Gleason ordered BOEM to do the new analysis of beluga and other resource impacts, putting the sole lease that was sold into suspension.

In response to Gleason’s order, BOEM compiled a supplemental environmental impact statement, completing that work in three months. The agency did not release any draft for public review, held no public meetings on the subject and took no public comment.

The agency considered three additional alternatives that would have increased protections for belugas and other resources, but it rejected those and kept the original plan in place, according to the document.

“As LS 258 has already occurred, selecting any alternatives other than those described above would not affirm that lease sale and would void the one lease issued as a result of it,” the Federal Register notice said.

In its supplemental environmental impact statement, BOEM asserted that the risks of leasing and the development that would result from it are minor for Cook Inlet belugas and other marine mammals.

“The likelihood of a large oil spill affecting Cook Inlet marine mammals is relatively low, but the consequences could affect some populations. Sea otters face the highest vulnerability from a large spill due to their dependence on fur for insulation, resulting in a moderate impact level. Cook Inlet beluga whales are at risk due to the small population size, but geographic and temporal factors substantially reduce the risk of exposure to a large spill, yielding a minor overall impact level,” the document said.

The agency’s impact statement also describes impacts of noise as minor. While Cook Inlet belugas are highly dependent on hearing other whales’ calls to navigate the murky waters, ship and industrial noise that would drown out those calls “are expected to be temporary, with anticipated localized effects on beluga behavior and no anticipated long-term effect on survival or fitness.” Additionally, no injuries to belugas are expected from lease-related activities, the document said.

The three new alternatives that BOEM considered would have added new protections for marine mammals and for subsistence and commercial fishing. Those alternatives would have reduced the available leasing territory in different increments, ranging from about one fifth to nearly half, according to the document.

The environmentalists who sued to overturn the lease sale criticized the decision and the lack of public participation leading up to it.

“BOEM’s decision to conduct the whole process in secrecy represents the federal government’s new approach to cutting the public out of decisions about our waters, and favoring the billionaire class and giant corporations over the people who call this place home. We are disgusted by this rushed and sloppy process on this final SEIS,” Bridget Maryott, co-executive director at Cook Inletkeeper, said in a statement, referring to the agency’s just-published supplemental environmental impact statement.

Hannah Foster, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that represented the plaintiffs, called the process leading to the decision a “black box.”

“We won our challenge against this lease sale because Interior failed to adequately consider sale alternatives and the impacts to the endangered beluga whales that will be harmed by blaring vessel noise and other oil industry operations. Yet BOEM has now reaffirmed the sale without seriously considering new alternatives or imposing any new measures to protect belugas,” she said in the statement.

Foster said Earthjustice and its clients are still reviewing the information about BOEM’s decision.

Including the lease sold in 2022, there are currently eight active leases in federal waters of Cook Inlet, all held by Hilcorp.

The Trump administration has already started planning a new Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale, the first of six nearly annual sales mandates for the inlet through 2032 under the sweeping budget bill that was called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Additionally, the administration included five Cook Inlet lease sales among the 21 it has proposed for federal waters off Alaska through 2031. Those 21 sales are proposed in the administration’s five-year outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing plan, released last month. It envisions oil development in nearly all federal waters off the state’s coasts.

The five-year plan drew praise from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Trump ally.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is leading the way to American energy dominance by restoring confidence in the federal government’s offshore leasing policies,” Dunleavy said at the time in a post on the social media site X.