Trump administration defends oil and gas lease sales on pristine Alaska land

The Trump administration's Interior Department told a federal judge Monday it acted lawfully when it opened millions of acres of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas leasing, defending itself against three consolidated lawsuits from conservation groups. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason heard arguments and said she intends to rule before the month's end.

Plaintiffs including the Center for Biological Diversity, Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, and Trustees for Alaska argue the Bureau of Land Management exceeded its authority, skipped site-specific analysis, relied on an inadequate polar bear opinion, and ignored subsistence requirements. The reserve, sometimes called 'Heathrow at the top of the world' for its migratory bird traffic, also hosts caribou and threatened polar bears.

The lease sale, the first of five mandated by last year's budget law, covers more than 600 tracts across roughly 18.6 million acres. A Justice Department attorney told the court the plan includes 'meaningful state-of-the-art obligations' for habitat protection, while the government separately argued that blocking the plan would cause disruptive consequences.

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