Justice Department Dismisses Alaska Lawsuit, Conceding Biden Era Oil and Gas Leasing Program Violated the Law

The Department of Justice's Energy and Natural Resources Division filed a stipulation today dismissing lawsuits by the State of Alaska and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, concerning those plaintiffs' challenges to the 2024 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

The lawsuits arose because the 2024 Program had imposed various restrictions on development, with the effect of frustrating Congress's directive that the Department of the Interior establish and administer a competitive oil and gas leasing program in the Coastal Plain region of the Arctic Refuge.

"The Biden era Alaska oil and gas leasing program violated the law and improperly limited Alaska's energy potential with unreasonable regulation," said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. "This settlement supports the Trump Administration's commitment to secure American energy independence and our national security for generations to come."

"This settlement sets the record straight that the Biden administration's 2024 restrictions on oil and gas production in Alaska were overly restrictive and contrary to Congress's clear command to establish a competitive oil and gas leasing program in Alaska's Coastal Plain," said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. "Today's correction of the prior administration's congressional obstruction helps enhance America's energy dominance and prevents any future repetition of overreaching policies that thwart our Nation's best interests."

"This settlement furthers President Trump's commitment to unleash Alaska's extraordinary resource potential," said Adam Gustafson, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's Energy and Natural Resources Division. "The Bureau of Land Management will now administer its oil and gas leasing program according to the plain meaning of the controlling statute. That means more oil leasing, more domestic energy, and more independence from foreign sources of energy."

The settlement concedes that the 2024 Program violated the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in various ways, including by:

• effectively abdicating Interior's duty to conduct a second lease sale;
• closing 75% of the 1.56 million-acre Coastal Plain to exploration and leasing;
• imposing unreasonable surface use restrictions on the remaining 25%; and
• unreasonably restricting surface disturbance to 995 acres Program-wide, instead of the "up to 2,000 acres" explicitly provided for in the Tax Act.

The settlement advances national and energy security interests by clarifying the Tax Act's requirements, identifying violations of those requirements, and prohibiting the Department of the Interior from repeating those violations in any future decision governing the Program.