Bernhardt said a future lease of the federally-owned land will make the entire 1.5 million acre Coastal Plain area available.
Bernhardt said the announcement “marks a new chapter in American energy independence” and predicted it could “create thousands of new jobs.”
Drilling in these controversial areas of the Alaskan arctic has long been controversial. A 2017 law required the department to hold two lease sales in the refuge by 2024. A date for those sales has not yet been set, Bernahrdt said.
Republican Alaskan lawmakers, Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, praised the decision.
“This is a capstone moment in our decades-long push to allow for the responsible development of a small part of Alaska’s 1002 Area,” Murkowski said in a statement Monday. “Through this program, we will build on our already-strong record of an increasingly minimal footprint for responsible resource development.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.