Washington, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that the Bureau of Land Management did not receive a single bid during a congressionally mandated oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In response, Jenny Rowland-Shea, director of Public Lands at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
The latest failure to lure oil and gas companies to drill in the Arctic Refuge shows it’s just not worth it. Drilling in this pristine and wildlife-rich landscape is bad business—plain and simple. It’s not a suitable playground for profit-hungry oil and gas companies that want to fleece taxpayers into subsidizing their drill-everywhere tactics. We should not allow one of the country’s last untouched places, sacred to the Gwich’in and Iñupiat peoples, be sold to the highest bidder.
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected].