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Biden limits oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaskan Arctic

The Interior Department also announced Friday that it will block a road crucial to accessing a planned copper and zinc mine in northern Alaska

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April 19, 2024 at 5:01 a.m. EDT
Caribou at Teshekpuk Lake in North Slope Borough, Alaska, in 2019. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
7 min

Future oil and gas drilling will be limited across more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the nation’s largest expanse of public land, under a sweeping Biden administration plan aimed at protecting sensitive ecosystems and wildlife.

The Interior Department’s final rule represents one of President Biden’s most significant steps to curb fossil fuel development on federal lands. It could help the president’s reelection campaign court young voters, a key Democratic constituency, after many youth climate activists criticized the administration’s approval of a massive drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope last year.