Congress Wants to Hand the Western Arctic Back to Big Oil 

The Western Arctic is one of the last vast, wild places left in America. It’s home to caribou herds that travel hundreds of miles to calve, millions of migratory birds from across the globe, and Alaska Native communities who have lived off these lands for generations. At 23 million acres, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (more warmly known as the Western Arctic) is the largest tract of public land in the United States — and right now, it’s under serious threat. 

In 2022, the Biden administration adopted a new Integrated Activity Plan (IAP) for the Western Arctic that started to bring balance back to how this landscape is managed. The plan cut back the reckless overreach of the Trump administration’s 2020 IAP, restoring protections for fragile habitats and for Alaska Native subsistence rights. It allowed leasing on roughly half the Western Arctic, while protecting the heart of the most ecologically and culturally significant “Special Areas” like Teshekpuk Lake. 

But Congress is now trying to dismantle those protections. 

The CRA Attack on the 2022 Plan 

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) have introduced resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the 2022 IAP.  

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a little-known law that allows Congress to overturn recently finalized federal rules with a simple majority vote — and without the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate. In the case of the Western Arctic, that means if Congress uses the CRA to nullify the 2022 IAP, the entirety of the 2022 plan disappears, and management reverts to the weaker 2020 Trump-era version. Even more damaging, the CRA forbids agencies from issuing another rule that is “substantially the same” in the future, effectively slamming the door on restoring protections for the Western Arctic’s Special Areas without entirely new legislation. 

What’s at Stake in the Special Areas 

Special Areas aren’t arbitrary boundaries. They are federally recognized designations meant to protect the most critical wildlife habitat and cultural sites in the Western Arctic. The 2022 IAP restored meaningful protections to these places — but all of that would vanish under a CRA repeal: 

• Teshekpuk Lake Special Area (3.65 million acres): Currently largely off-limits to leasing and protected with some no-surface-occupancy rules, the CRA action would open more than 1.5 million new acres to leasing. 

• Colville River Special Area (2.44 million acres): Protected today for its raptor nesting cliffs and rich riparian ecosystems. A CRA repeal would erase its Special Area status entirely. 

• Utukok River Uplands (7.1 million acres): Vital calving grounds for the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, central to food security for local communities. The Trump plan would reopen half of it to leasing. 

• Peard Bay and Kasegaluk Lagoon: Key habitat for waterfowl, beluga whales, and spotted seals. Both would be thrown open to industrial disturbance if the CRA resolution passes. 

In short, the lands most important to caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, whales, and subsistence hunters would once again be treated as expendable. 

The Climate and Subsistence Costs 

Overturning the 2022 IAP would also mean locking in decades of new oil and gas development at a time when climate science says we can’t afford it. More drilling in the Arctic doesn’t just threaten local ecosystems — it adds to global carbon pollution and pushes us further away from a livable climate. 

For Alaska Native communities, it’s also a direct attack on food security and cultural survival. Industrial roads, pipelines, and drill pads fragment caribou calving grounds and disrupt access to subsistence hunting and fishing. The 2022 IAP strengthened consultation requirements with tribes and expanded protections for subsistence. All of that would disappear overnight under the CRA. 

The Economics Don’t Add Up 

Big Oil claims more drilling will fix Alaska’s fiscal problems. But the state’s own Department of Revenue data tells a very different story. 

Take Willow, ConocoPhillips’ massive new oil project in the Western Arctic. Just last month, Alaska officials cut their revenue projections for Willow nearly in half. Instead of $6.3 billion for the state over 27 years, the treasury will now only see about $2.6 billion. Meanwhile, ConocoPhillips pockets an estimated $10.3 billion in profit. 

That pencils out to less than $100 million a year for Alaska — barely a drop in the bucket of a state budget that exceeds $5 billion annually. Worse still, under Alaska’s oil tax structure, ConocoPhillips is set to receive more in state tax credits than the project generates in actual tax revenue. In plain English: Alaska is subsidizing oil companies to drill federal lands. 

If the biggest Arctic oil project in decades is already a financial dud for the state, why would opening more of the Western Arctic to drilling suddenly change the math? The simple answer is: it won’t.  

New projects in Teshekpuk, the Colville River, or Utukok will follow the same pattern — large profits for Big Oil, potential losses for the State of Alaska, and enormous risks for communities and ecosystems. 

A Reckless, Permanent Rollback 

Perhaps the most dangerous part of the CRA is how permanent it is. If the resolution passes, the Department of the Interior would be barred from issuing any future rule “substantially the same” as the 2022 IAP. In other words, these protections couldn’t simply be reinstated by another administration. They’d be locked away unless Congress introduced entirely new legislation — an unlikely prospect given our history of political gridlock. 

That means one rushed vote in Congress now could erase decades of public input, scientific review, and tribal consultation, while handcuffing future administrations from restoring balance in the Western Arctic. 

The Bottom Line 

Rolling back the 2022 IAP would be a disaster — for wildlife, for Alaska Native communities, for the climate, and even for Alaska’s bottom line. The 2022 plan attempted the beginnings of a compromise, allowing development on more than half of the Western Arctic while protecting the most irreplaceable lands and waters from destruction. 

Sullivan and Begich’s CRA resolutions are the opposite of responsible governance. It’s a handout to Big Oil at the expense of caribou, birds, and subsistence hunters. It’s a climate setback we can’t afford. And it’s an economic con that leaves Alaska taxpayers subsidizing the very companies that are profiting from their lands.