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The Biden administration expanded federal protections across millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness on Friday, blocking oil, gas and mining operations in some of the most unspoiled land in the country.
The Interior Department said it would deny a permit for an industrial road that the state of Alaska had wanted to build through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in order to reach a large copper deposit with an estimated value of $7.5 billion.
The Interior Department found that the road would significantly and irrevocably disturb wildlife habitat, pollute spawning grounds for salmon and threaten the hunting and fishing traditions of more than 30 Alaska Native communities.
“This misguided rule from the Biden Administration sharply limits future oil and natural gas development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a region explicitly intended by Congress to bolster America’s energy security while generating important economic growth and revenue for local Alaskan communities,” Dustin Meyer, the senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main lobbying group, said in a statement.
The rule also widened a rift among Alaska Natives already split over the future of fossil fuels in the Arctic, an area both deeply threatened by climate change and dependent on oil for jobs.
At the same time, about 95 percent of the $410 million annual budget of the North Slope Borough, which abuts the petroleum reserve, comes from local taxes on oil and gas operations.
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