Alaska can expect very different approaches on resource projects, depending on the president

The federal government’s outsized influence in Alaska means the next president’s administration will have a huge impact on whether resource development projects all over the state move forward.

But that impact, of course, depends on who Americans elect to be president. And left hanging in the balance is everything from oil drilling in the Arctic, mining in western Alaska, a road through a national wildlife refuge to facilitate another mining district and logging in Southeast.

A recent story in the Anchorage Daily News took a look at how various projects might be affected if either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is elected president.

ADN reporter Alex DeMarban wrote the story. He says we can expect very different approaches from Trump or Harris, but both sides seem focused on Alaska’s vastness.

Listen:

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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Alex DeMarban: So for the Republican side, it’s our vast mineral wealth, our vast oil wealth, logging potential. From the Democratic side, it’s our beautiful, vast landscapes, large, unique wildlife populations and climate change concerns. And one of the consequences of the back and forth with these large projects is that it makes it difficult for, say, an investor, to look at long-term horizons and feel confident that if they invest billions of dollars, that their investment is going to pay off, because if the next president puts a halt to a project or is going to be hung up in court for eons, and that might be why the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t seem to have a lot of interest from major oil companies. Or at least that is surely one reason.

Casey Grove: And, I mean, it’s not just ANWR either, right? Like there’s the NPR-A.

AD: Totally.

CG: One thing that was interesting about your story was you found that there’s this, like, Project 2025 connection to the NPR-A, right? It’s like, maybe not as exciting as exciting as some of the Project 2025 things that people are riled up about, but yeah, tell me about that.

AD: Yeah, it wasn’t just the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, but interestingly, in the Project, 2025 — which I should clarify, was said to be written by the Heritage Foundation, and President Trump, former President Trump, has disavowed it. But at any rate, there’s a special section in there on calling for immediate action in Alaska. Much of that section deals with resource development. It’s written by a former acting director under Trump of the Bureau of Land Management, and it calls on Trump to do things that we could probably expect him to do, even if there wasn’t such a thing as a Project 2025.

It talks about expanding drilling opportunities in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, which Biden has really clamped down upon and is even in the process of trying to further clamp down on that potentially. And it talks about renewing Trump’s efforts to allow logging opportunities in the Tongass National Forest. It also calls on Trump to immediately redo his efforts to have a 200-mile road through the wilderness for mining in Northwest Alaska, the Ambler road. Yeah, that was fascinating to see that this former BLM official had written that section, you know, just special for us in Alaska. Just, “Here, Trump, here’s what we want you to do.”

CG: Now, I mean, turning back to the possibility of a Kamala Harris presidency, is it just a foregone conclusion that her administration would oppose oil drilling in the Arctic, or is it a little bit more nuanced than that?

AD: It remains to be seen, but it largely seems like, from former officials and observers, experts in this area who I talk to, she can be generally expected to resume Biden’s approaches when it comes to big Alaska projects. And one area that’s been favorable for Alaska is renewable energy, which Biden has, you know, through bills, has brought in lots of money to Alaska.

CG: I mean, then there’s a handful of other sort of ideas or projects in Alaska. And you know, one of them that you focused on in the story was the Pebble Mine, or the proposed Pebble Mine. And that seems a little bit nuanced, too, in terms of, like, the permitting and how things have gone back and forth. And I wonder if you could tell me about that.

AD: Yeah, that’s an interesting one, and that’s kind of another departure from the norm, in that under the Trump administration, it was not a resource development project that got completed or advanced significantly. In fact, it was stopped under the Trump administration by the Army Corps (of Engineers). And then the Biden administration went even further and had the Environmental Protection Agency stop it. So that is one gray area right now. It looks like it won’t happen — ever, perhaps — certainly not anytime soon. But there is a lawsuit over it still brought by the developer, the potential developer, of the mine. And so it’s possible that it could come back up. And the developer basically thinks that under a Trump administration, there might be a little more of an opening to get the project back on track.

CG: And then, kind of along the same lines, I mean, you wrote about the Ambler Road, and you mentioned that earlier, too. With that one, it sounded like the back and forth and the permitting and the things that had been shut down with the Ambler Road would be much harder to undo. Is that right?

AD: Oh, yeah, that’s one area. Although, in general, a former Department of Justice litigator I spoke to, who worked on a lot of Alaska land issues, basically, he said Trump is going to have a lot of difficulty getting these projects advanced to a level again where they can’t be stopped. It takes a long time to allow resource development compared to halting resource development. And particularly if Trump guts the federal workforce, like he’s talked about doing. That’s going to make it even harder, because you need that expertise to make permits, you know, legally and regulatorily passable.