Environmentalists criticize Trump administration push for new oil and gas drilling

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Top Trump administration officials — fresh off touring one of the country's largest oil fields in the Alaska Arctic — headlined an energy conference led by the state's Republican governor on Tuesday that environmentalists criticized as promoting new oil and gas drilling and turning away from the climate crisis.

Several dozen protesters were outside Gov. Mike Dunleavy's annual Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage, where U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin were featured speakers. The federal officials were continuing a multiday trip aimed at highlighting President Donald Trump's push to expand oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in the state.

The trip has included meetings with pro-drilling groups and officials, including some Alaska Native leaders on the petroleum-rich North Slope, and a visit to the Prudhoe Bay oil field near the Arctic Ocean that featured selfies near the 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Calls for additional oil and gas drilling — including Trump’s renewed focus on getting a massive liquefied natural gas project built — are “false solutions” to energy needs and climate concerns, protester Sarah Furman said outside the Anchorage convention hall, as people carried signs with slogans such as “Alaska is Not for Sale” and “Protect our Public Lands.”

"We find it really disingenuous that they’re hosting this conference and not talking about real solutions,” she said.

Topics at the conference, which runs through Thursday, also include mining, carbon management, nuclear energy, renewables and hydrogen. Oil has been Alaska’s economic lifeblood for decades, and Dunleavy has continued to embrace fossil fuels even as he has touted other energy opportunities in the state.

Another protester, Rochelle Adams, who is Gwich’in, raised concerns about the ongoing push to allow oil and gas drilling on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Gwich’in leaders have said they consider the coastal plain sacred, as caribou they rely on calve there. Leaders of the Iñupiaq community of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, support drilling as economically vital and have joined Alaska political leaders in welcoming Trump's interest in reviving a leasing program there.

“When these people come from outside to take and take and take, we are going to be left with the aftereffects,” Adams said, adding later: “It's our health that will be impacted. It’s our wellness, our ways of life.”

Zeldin, during a friendly question-and-answer period led by Dunleavy, said wildlife he saw while on the North Slope didn't appear “to be victims of their surroundings” and seemed “happy.”

Burgum, addressing a move toward additional drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, said wildlife and development can coexist. His agency during the Alaska trip announced plans to repeal Biden-era restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in portions of the petroleum preserve that are designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values.

Wright bristled at the idea of policy "in the name of climate change” that he said would have no impact on climate change. Stopping oil production in Alaska doesn't change demand for oil, he said.

“You know, we hear terms like clean energy and renewable energy. These are inaccurate marketing terms,” he said. “There is no energy source that does not take significant materials, land and impact on the environment to produce. Zero.”

Joining for part of the U.S. officials' trip were representatives from Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates. Asian countries are being courted to sign onto the Alaska gas project, which has floundered for years to gain traction amid cost and other concerns. The project, as proposed, would include a nearly 810-mile (1,300-kilometer) pipeline that would funnel gas from the North Slope to port, with an eye largely on exports of liquefied natural gas.

Wright told reporters a goal in inviting them to the Prudhoe Bay stop was for them to see the oil pipeline infrastructure and environment and meet with residents and business leaders.

Glenfarne Alaska LNG LLC, which has taken a lead in advancing the project, on Tuesday announced expressions of interest from a number of “potential partners." Costs surrounding the project — which have been pegged around $44 billion for the pipeline and other infrastructure — are in the process of being refined before a decision is made on whether to move forward.

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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska.