Citing biodiversity and Alaska Native subsistence whaling, the Obama administration moved to block development in 9.8 million acres within the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as part of a new five-year outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing program, the draft of which was released Tuesday morning by the Department of the Interior.
The announcement came two days after President Barack Obama said he planned to ask Congress to declare much of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northeast Alaska as wilderness, including the possibly oil-and-gas-rich coastal plain—and a month after the president closed waters in and around Bristol Bay to oil and gas development.
The White House released maps of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, showing the excluded areas. According to the U.S. Department of Interior, four of the five areas off-limits in the current draft were also off-limits in the previous five-year plan, which covered 2012-2017. The fifth area is around Hanna Shoal in the Chukchi Sea.
On a conference call to discuss the plan, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell was asked about criticism from Alaska’s elected leaders, who have said the federal government is stifling resource extraction in the state.
She responded that some areas are too special to develop, calling Hanna Shoal, about 100 miles off Alaska’s northwest coast, an “ocean garden that drives a lot of the marine life.”
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