Interior cancels remaining leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The U.S. Interior Department has canceled seven oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The leases canceled Wednesday were part of a sale held in the waning days of the Trump administration. Interior officials under Biden argued the sale was legally flawed. Alaska political leaders have long pushed to allow oil and gas drilling on the refuge’s coastal plain, an area seen as sacred to the Indigenous Gwich’in. The state’s congressional delegation in 2017 succeeded in getting language added to a federal tax law that called for the U.S. government to hold two lease sales in the region by late 2024.