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Today the Biden administration confirmed by submitting legal briefs that it will undermine its own climate goals and allow harm to local Indigenous communities by continuing to defend the flawed Trump era approval of the massive Willow oil project in court.

Conservation groups moved today to intervene in a lawsuit defending the Biden administration’s decision to pause new federal oil and gas leasing while it reviews the government leasing program.

Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Defenders of Wildlife and four additional groups applaud a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling yesterday that stops ConocoPhillips from doing winter road construction, gravel mining, and blasting on its Willow project in the western Arctic, on federal lands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, while the court decides an appeal in the case.

Following the Trump administration’s last desperate effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas lease sales earlier this year, members of Congress reintroduced the Arctic Refuge Protection Act.

Today’s lease sale for the coastal plain of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge continues the Trump administration’s destructive attack on our nation’s public lands and wildlife. Today, three entities were identified as the successful bidders on 11 tracts, yielding a paltry $7 million to the federal treasury because the state of Alaska receives half of the sale price of $14 million. The failed lease sale underscores a lack of interest in developing the Arctic refuge and sets up an incoming Biden administration to reverse course to permanently protect the refuge.