Alaska’s Republican senators are splitting with the Trump administration over an expansive offshore lease plan that would open large swaths of the state’s waters to drilling.
Alaska Republicans push back on Trump offshore drilling plan
Amelia Davidson, Energywire, December 3, 2025
Both Alaska senators are lobbying the Interior Department to limit new offshore drilling in the Arctic.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have both contacted the Interior Department after it proposed a new five-year lease schedule that would mandate 21 sales in Alaska waters, as well as expanded drilling in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, also known as the Gulf of America.
The duo is particularly concerned with plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Bering Strait and High Arctic, which the U.S. has recently claimed. They want the administration to instead focus on expanding drilling in Cook Inlet, in southern Alaska.
Sullivan said he has already talked to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and requested that lease sales not proceed in Arctic waters. The Alaska Republican said that he was particularly concerned that offshore drilling could hurt communities in the area that depend on fishing and whaling.
“Alaskan oil is entering a renaissance driven by a predicted 13% upswing in 2026 production, the largest since the 1980s, and a possible reboot of LNG exports to Asia from the Kenai Peninsula, supplied via pipeline from the North Slope.”
Alaska’s Crude Output Surges, Gas To Play Greater Role
Pat Davis Szymczak, Journal of Petroleum Technology, December 1, 2025
In 2026, Alaska’s crude oil production is expected to rise for the first time in decades, supported by renewed political momentum behind resource development, including efforts to meet growing natural gas demand while advancing LNG export infrastructure aimed at Asian markets.
Though Alaska produced its first commercial oil in 1902 near Katalla, a ghost town today 47 miles southeast of Cordova, the US’s forty-ninth state only joined the ranks of major oil and gas producers in 1968 with the discovery of the North Slope’s Prudhoe Bay oil field, the largest oil field in North America.
The 1973 Arab oil embargo ignited the political will to build the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1977 to connect remote North Slope oil fields to the port in Valdez. As ConocoPhillips’ CEO Ryan Lance remarked during a November 2025 earnings call, “Alaska is (has always been) about oil.”
Next year, however, could herald the start of a new evolution in Alaska’s oil and gas journey not seen since the 1970s, particularly if projects such as Alaska LNG, which has been debated for more than a decade, are finally declared financially feasible.
“Key Excerpt: Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.”
| Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy David Blackmon, Energy Editions, December 2, 2025 (subscription required) |
Well, lookee here: The climate alarm boosters at the WSJ have finally figured out something Stu Turley, Tammy Nemeth, Irina Slav and I have been pointing out on the Energy Realities podcast every week for the last three years: That Europe (and the UK) are destroying their economies at the altar of the Global Church of Climate Alarm™.
Will wonders never cease. Here’s the thing about this: Had the WSJ, the NYTimes the Washington Post and, dare I say it, the Economist and the Financial Times been honest with their readers in real time rather than publish long-after-the-fact inoculation stories like this one, much of the economic ruin and subservience to China might well have been avoided.
But such is the cost of an international media establishment which has gone whole-hog into feeding at the trough of rancid propaganda.