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I guess nobody should be surprised, but it turns out opening ANWR to drilling is a bipartisan position in Alaska itself where the drilling will actually take place. Other issues are also discussed in the rest of the article at the link below the ANWR quote.

Three potential changes immediately caught the imagination of Alaska Republicans in the wake of Trump's victory: drilling, regulations and getting that road to King Cove.

A is for ANWR

The election was up for grabs late Tuesday evening, but as the vote tallies took a positive turn for Trump, the ghost of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was almost immediately in the air. And as soon as it was clear Republicans had held onto the U.S. House and Senate, pro-development Alaskans could already taste oil.

As Sen. Lisa Murkowski circulated at an election night party at a downtown Anchorage brewery, so did talk of opening ANWR. The Associated Press had called the race for Murkowski, and she huddled near the stage to talk to a few reporters about Trump, her victory and the Senate's continued Republican majority.

A reporter had just begun to ask Murkowski what might become of ANWR when someone wandered over and shoved a smartphone under her face, interrupting the exchange midsentence. On the screen it said Trump had been elected president.

"More Than a Feeling," by Boston, blared in the background. Murkowski's eyes grew wide and her face froze.

"Can I see that again?" she asked when he pulled the phone down. She stared at it for a solid 30 seconds before looking up, saying "I've got to go check this out," and walked away to talk with staff in a corner.

When she returned a few minutes later, the situation was no longer hypothetical.

"Well, as you know, we have been working to advance ANWR for decades now. And we need to have the support of the Congress," Murkowski said. As of yet, it wasn't clear if they'd have the numbers.

"But if the numbers continue for us with the Senate and you have a president who has expressed support, I will be chairing the energy committee again, and I am going to look to push that early on," she said.

The Senate Republican majority will be just 51 or 52 members, depending on a runoff election in Louisiana.

Former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and former Republican Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, writing on the Midnight Sun political blog, said Tuesday night they would love to get ANWR into Trump's plan for his first 100 days in office.

Begich would be happy to drum up support among moderate Democratic lawmakers, he said. "That's the kind of stuff I'd do pro-bono."

"I would suspect that the opening of ANWR actually has a fairly good chance (when) Republicans hold" both Congress and the White House, said Bob Gillam, founder of McKinley Capital Management, who has known Trump since the two graduated from business school together.

https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/11/09 ... ect-trump/

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More at link below quote,

With Republicans set to achieve a decades-long policy goal of opening a section of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, environmentalists over the weekend launched a last-ditch effort to halt the initiative, though their efforts almost surely will be in vain.

House and Senate Republicans late last week unveiled a final tax-reform package that includes a controversial provision allowing a section of ANWR — which has been one of the highest-profile battlegrounds in the energy vs. environment debate since the 1970s — to be opened to oil exploration. ANWR drilling was left out of the House’s original tax legislation but was included in the Senate’s, and now has found its way into the final version of the bill hashed out by the chambers’ conference committee last week.

Green groups are well aware that drilling in ANWR would represent a major blow to their agenda, and they’re pressuring lawmakers publicly and behind the scenes in the hopes of getting a last-minute change to the tax bill. Top environmental organizations also used public-relations moves to galvanize public opinion on their side of the debate.

The Sierra Club, for example, over the weekend projected anti-ANWR drilling messages onto the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The messages included quotes from Americans opposed to drilling, the group said.

“The American people are clear in their opposition to sacrificing this wild place. Support for protecting the Arctic Refuge has been shouted from rallies on the Hill and in members’ districts, delivered to offices in writing, sung by carolers, displayed in ice sculptures and now projected in giant letters,” said Lena Moffitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign. “It’s a can’t miss message that Congress must note and reject this rigged tax scheme.”

LINK

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Much additional text and many pretty pictures at link below the quote.

Matt Nolan, who runs a mapping business in Alaska using aerial photography, was flying a small plane to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeastern part of the state last month when he noticed a pattern on the tundra.

Dr. Nolan, a geophysicist, saw a grid of tracks left by heavy vehicles involved in recent seismic testing for oil and gas exploration in an area called Point Thomson. The tracks, several hundred yards apart, were as regular as a checkerboard and ran across the landscape just outside of the refuge.

A similar dense grid may soon cover some of the refuge itself, perhaps beginning as early as December, if seismic testing starts under a plan to sell leases for oil and gas exploration that was approved by Congress last year and that is strongly opposed by environmental and conservation groups. The northern part of the refuge, 1.5 million acres of the Arctic coastal plain known as the 1002 Area, is thought to overlie billions of barrels of oil and gas.

Disturbances like the tracks Dr. Nolan saw could remain for decades or longer like a tattoo on the refuge, a vast tableau of mosses, sedges and shrubs atop permafrost that is considered one of the most pristine landscapes in North America. There are still signs, for example, of a much less dense pattern of tracks from the only other time testing was allowed there, in the mid-1980s, and of the only drilling pad, which was built at the same time.

Any new tracks could also potentially alter how surface water flows in the tundra, draining lakes or accelerating the thawing of permafrost in some areas.

Dr. Nolan spent most of July flying across the 1002 Area making a high-resolution elevation map that will serve as a baseline for any changes to come. When he saw the tracks outside the refuge (lingering snow and ice made some of them easier to spot) he decided to map those as well. He found that they were up to half a foot deep.

Dr. Nolan, a former research professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who has mapped changes in land and glaciers for years, said he was not taking sides in the fight over drilling in the refuge, “but I want to make sure that whatever happens out here happens in the most responsible way.”

Environmental and conservation groups, which have fought to preserve the 19-million-acre refuge for decades, say that seismic testing, not to mention eventual drilling and production of oil and gas, could irreversibly alter the 1002 Area and potentially affect the habitat and behavior of caribou, polar bears and other animals there.

“There’s not a lot in here that you can look at and feel good about,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director of the Alaska Wilderness League, referring to a plan for testing in the 1002 Area put forth this year by a seismic services company, SAExploration, and two Alaska native corporations.

That plan proposes that testing begin this winter, when ice and snow provide some protection to the tundra, and resume, if necessary, the following winter. In addition to special trucks that vibrate the ground, the effort would include movable fuel tanks as well as housing and other facilities for two crews of 160 workers each. In the plan, the company said it and its partners were “dedicated to minimizing the effect of our operations on the environment.”

By producing three-dimensional images of the subsurface, the testing would help oil companies determine whether there are enough reserves to make it worth buying leases to drill in the area.

The plan drew criticism from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service when it was first put forth in May. But another agency of the Interior Department, the Bureau of Land Management, will review the plan and decide whether to allow testing. Lesli Ellis-Wouters, a bureau spokeswoman, said that SAExploration had been asked to provide more information.

The approval process includes conducting an environmental assessment, a less-thorough appraisal than an environmental impact statement, or E.I.S., although the bureau can require an E.I.S. later if the initial review finds the work could result in significant impacts.

LINK

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The WaPo is opposed to development of ANWR. Can't say I am surprised.

The Interior Department has commissioned an expedited environmental review of the impact of leasing part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling, according to a document released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The nearly $1.7 million contract that Interior signed April 8 with Colorado-based Environmental Management and Planning Solutions, obtained by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, shows how rapidly the Trump administration is moving ahead with its plans to open up the refuge’s coastal plain to energy exploration.

It outlines a schedule ending with a lease sale notice to be issued next summer. That gives the firm three months to complete a scoping report, which will set the terms of how federal officials will gauge the impact of energy development in the refuge. The report must reflect the input of local tribes and the hundreds of thousands of public comments that have been submitted.

Congress passed tax legislation in December directing Interior to conduct two lease sales by December 2024, each covering 400,000 acres, in the refuge’s coastal plain. Many environmentalists and scientists have sought to block energy exploration within the nearly 19 million-acre refuge on the grounds that it would disturb denning polar bears, disrupt a major migration corridor for waterfowl and porcupine caribou, and damage wilderness habitat that has enjoyed federal protection for decades.

In an interview Monday, Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner Andrew T. Mack said that state officials realize Interior has laid out a “compressed” schedule and that they are devoting resources to ensure the assessment is done right.

“We looked at the schedule, and we felt we could put forth the resources to assist,” Mack said. “We’re not going to shy away from saying there will be impacts. And we need to figure out ways to mitigate those impacts.”

Some former Interior officials, along with several environmentalists, questioned whether the federal government could conduct an adequate environmental-impact statement under such tight time constraints.

Geoffrey Haskett, who served as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional director between 2009 and 2016, said in an interview that such reviews typically take two to three years.

“The idea of imposing an arbitrary deadline like this is just horrific to me,” said Haskett, who is now president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association. “I think they’re going to make mistakes because they’re moving so fast. They’re certainly not going to get much input on this.”

Neither Environmental Management and Planning Solutions nor the Interior Department responded to requests for comment.

The contract indicates that the firm will rely largely on existing information about the area rather than conduct new surveys. Mack noted that state and federal officials have done multiple environmental assessments of nearby areas over the past two decades, which can be incorporated into the current review.

“There’s a body of information that has been developed through recent [environmental-impact statements] that can serve as a baseline for what we’re doing now,” he said.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which represents the companies working on the North Slope and Cook Inlet, has been urging the federal government to take whatever time it needs.

“There are some who say it should take 14 years to read all the comments because they don’t want to see a lease sale anyway,” said Kara Moriarty, president of the association. “And there are others who think they can get the job done in two months, six months, eight months.”

Moriarty said, “We want this to be a thorough process because we know it’s going to be challenged in court.”

The Interior Department has set a length limit of 150 pages on the environmental-impact statement to be written by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), although the agency is supposed to respond to all comments. Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for the Wilderness Society, said that would be difficult given that her group alone submitted a 150-page comment letter to the department.

The tax legislation that authorized drilling in the iconic refuge imposed several constraints on the process, which has created some confusion.

Normally an agency doing an environmental-impact statement would have the option of recommending no action, but that is not an option under the legislation. Mack said that makes the process “a little different,” and added it is unclear how federal officials will address that issue.

Congress put the BLM in charge of the process, and the contract makes clear that the Fish and Wildlife Service — which is mentioned just three times in the document — does not have decision-making authority.

“The methodology for the impacts analysis must be agreed to by the BLM staff and the final analysis will be made in consultation with BLM staff,” the contract says.

Fish and Wildlife is responsible for managing the surface of the refuge — including its flora and fauna — while the BLM controls the subsurface. Epstein said these “two different sets of mandates” should be given equal weight.

The BLM held a three-day closed meeting last week on the environmental review with other government agencies, including officials from Mack’s office, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the North Slope Borough and several Alaska Native tribes. There have been seven public meetings on the scoping process this summer, all but one of which were held in Alaska.

SAExploration, whose initial plan for exploratory seismic work in the refuge was sharply criticized by the Fish and Wildlife Service, is expected to submit a revised plan and may have done so already. Environmental groups said the seismic work would disturb the habitat.

Mack, however, said that “seismic has proven in Alaska to be valuable tool, an environmental tool.” He said seismic results help exploration crews focus on “a more limited program.”

Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said the provisions suggest that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has “set this up as a rubber-stamp environmental review. . . . For $1.7 million, taxpayers should be getting a serious assessment of the dangers and damage that will be done by drilling the Arctic refuge, not a kangaroo court.”

LINK