Against all odds, 2019 was a banner year for protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from destructive oil and gas exploration and drilling.
Ever since congressional Republicans passed legislation opening up the Refuge’s sensitive coastal plain, the Trump administration has pulled out all the stops to make drilling happen as soon as possible, despite the risks to the unique character of this wilderness area, the climate, and the human rights of the Gwich’in Nation. They’ve tried to rush the environmental review process and suppress scientists’ serious concerns about drilling in this sensitive area. But despite these efforts, no leasing or exploration has happened in the Arctic Refuge this year, and we’ve laid critical groundwork to achieve permanent protections and ensure that this special place remains unspoiled.
Our first major victory of 2019 came in February, when officials with the Department of the Interior confirmed that plans to conduct destructive seismic testing in the coastal plain had been set back at least a year.
This announcement came in the wake of a powerful public backlash in response to an application by a company called SAExploration to conduct this exploration. Along with our partners, we organized more than 250,000 people to send emails and make calls to SAExploration’s offices and executive board urging them to drop their proposal. We also supported the Gwich’in Steering Committee and local Indigenous advocates in a powerful action to hand-deliver boxes containing 100,000 of those letters to the company’s office in Houston.
Our work to amplify public opposition to this proposal set back the permitting process enough that the company missed its window of opportunity last winter -- the ground needed to be frozen for them to operate -- and now, almost a year later, SAExploration still doesn’t have the permits it needs to bring destructive seismic testing to the coastal plain.
But even without having the data from seismic testing to tell them whether or not there’s actually any oil in the coastal plain, the Trump administration made it clear that they wanted to charge ahead anyway and hold a lease sale by the end of this year, so we had to keep the pressure up and take the fight directly to major oil companies and the banks that fund them.
That’s why this spring, as oil companies and banks gathered for their annual shareholder meetings, we joined Indigenous allies in showing up at these meetings across the country and the world. We attended the shareholder meetings of four major oil companies and seven financial institutions, and continued to have ongoing communication with them to make them understand why drilling in the Arctic Refuge would be a disaster for human rights and the climate and demand that they stay out.
Our efforts paid off, and this year five global banks ruled out financing for drilling in the Arctic. Just this week, Goldman Sachs became the first major American bank to do the same, thanks to our advocacy in partnership with the Gwich’in.
This summer, BP also announced that they planned to sell off all their assets in Alaska and not pursue drilling in the Refuge.
Meanwhile, we continued to work with Congressional champions like Rep. Jared Huffman to support legislation that would restore protections to the Arctic Refuge by repealing the provision in the controversial December 2017 tax bill that opened up the coastal plain for drilling. In September, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, marking the first time since 1981 that the House passed a bill opposing drilling in the Arctic.
As opposition to Arctic drilling grows in the private sector, among the public, and on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration still hasn't found a way around the obvious fact that drilling in the Refuge would be an environmental disaster, and they missed their goal of holding the first lease sale there before the end of the year.
We know they’ll keep trying in 2020 and we’ll have to work to keep up this momentum and achieve permanent protections for the Arctic Refuge. We’ve built a powerful movement to do just that. This year, we grew our list of Arctic activists and submitted more than 186,000 comments in support of defending the Refuge.
Two years after the passage of legislation opening up the coastal plain for drilling, I’m more optimistic than ever that we can fight back against these dangerous plans.