Biden Can Slow Trump’s Roll on Arctic Oil Drilling
His secret weapon is time, which is in short supply for major bidders.
Now open for drilling.
Photographer: Steven Chase/USFWS via Getty Images
The Mukluk well, drilled in the unforgiving waters north of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, is the stuff of awful legend in oil circles. When it came up dry in 1983 after $2 billion had been sunk, some surmised oil had definitely been there at one point but perhaps shifted elsewhere in a sort of vast geological leg-pull. As one executive involved remarked: “We drilled in the right place. We were simply 30 million years too late.”1
Fortitude helps, it seems, but timing clearly is everything when it comes to Alaskan wildcatting. The current controversy over new leases to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, won’t play out over eons. However, that’s exactly the sort of timeline the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden — which opposes the auction — will work toward.