TAPS Attack: Biden Administration vs. Alaska

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 20, 2024

“It is now time for DOI and BLM to prove their worth, and whether they are truly working in the public interest, or merely pandering to the Lower-48 radical environmental elite … trying to shut down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) … [and] Alaska.” ( – U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan, below)

Termite aspirations. That term from Ayn Rand toward the enemies of modern living and human betterment is applicable to many energy issues today. One of the most recent examples regards the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which since 1977 has been transporting crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez (800 miles) for tanker shipment to markets. Today, TAPS averages about 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day, accounting for 3.5 percent of U.S. production.

Petition to Close

This June, these environmental groups filed a legal petition to the U.S. Department of Interior to phase-out and decommission TAPS: the Center for Biological Diversity; Pacific Environment; Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic; Alaska Community Action on Toxics; Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition; and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (also see here).

“[TAPS] is approaching the end of its useful life due to mounting climate change-driven damages to both the aging pipeline infrastructure and the entire Arctic ecosystem,” the six petitioners state, also citing “the imperative for the United States to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel-based energy.”

Operating under a 30-year pipeline right-of-way granted by the Bureau of Land Management (Department of Interior) with ten years to run, petitioners seek

a managed phasedown of the pipeline, drafting an updated Dismantlement, Removal, and Restoration (DR&R) plan should also promptly commence. Avoiding the most severe harms from climate change requires immediate action to halt any new fossil fuel development and begin a rapid transition towards more sustainable energy sources, especially in the Arctic. We simply cannot afford a decade more of TAPS operations without any comprehensive analysis of its ongoing, harmful impacts and the need to implement fundamental changes towards a phasedown.

Such would be a “taking” and suggests the need to privatize the public domain in Alaska to avoid political issues, to depoliticize, energy policy in Arctic. Such privatization, in fact, would generate revenue to retire federal debt at a time of fiscal constraint.

Biden vs. Alaska

More is going on to de-develop Alaska’s oil industry from Washington, DC. The Biden-Harris Administration is trying to close more areas on Alaska’s North Slope to oil and gas development. The state of Alaska and native governments within the state are suing Biden-Harris in this regard.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has issued a final Environmental Impact Statement recommending the revocation of Public Land Orders executed in 2021 that would encumber 28 million acres in the state. “Leaving PLOs in place across Alaska serves as a de facto land withdrawal that restricts public access, multiple use, and the transfer of certain selected lands to Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans,” a press release by Alaskan U.S. senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan stated. “With this action,” Murkowski added:

the Biden administration has wasted an opportunity to do right by Alaska by refusing to lift a single acre of a single PLO anywhere in our state, instead keeping all of these lands in a restricted status. This is effectively a new form of administrative land withdrawal, even though most PLOs in Alaska have served their purpose and are no longer needed. This wouldn’t be acceptable in any other state, but this administration is once again treating Alaska differently—and far worse—than states in the Lower 48.”  

Sullivan noted that the Biden Administration “has issued more than 64 executive orders and actions directly targeting Alaska … harming our jobs and economy, but also our Alaska Native communities, who will be denied access to gravel resources to build out local village infrastructure.”

TAPS is part of this federal attack. Dan Sullivan recently wrote this letter to Interior Secretary Debra Haaland and director, Bureau of Land Management, Tracey Stone-Manning. His inquiry and request foreshadow an all-out attempt to root out the termites at work 4,300 miles away.

I am writing to express my serious concerns with the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to walk away from its commitment to the State of Alaska to revoke Public Land Order (PLO) 5150. Your decision to abruptly abandon the public process associated with lifting PLO 5150, without notice, at the same time that far-left environmental groups are trying to shut down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) raises questions regarding potential collusion between the Biden Administration and the Lower-48 radical environmentalists that want to shut down Alaska.

The revocation of PLO 5150 would enable the conveyance of the land under TAPS to the State of Alaska. As detailed in a letter that the Alaska congressional delegation sent to the Alaska State Director for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on July 8, 2024, BLM recommended that numerous PLOs be partially or fully revoked, including PLO 5150 … But unsurprisingly, BLM also failed to publish an EA for PLO 5150 when it released final SEIS for the Central Yukon RMP, despite BLM’s commitment to Alaska’s DNR to do so.

At a recent Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, you provided a series of excuses to explain away your failure, claiming BLM’s “plates are full” and that your decision to abandon the EA process for PLO 5150 was a “collective decision about workload with the Department.” Such a statement is a complete and utter affront. Indeed, the voices of Alaskans are yet again being ignored by your Administration. This became abundantly clear during your recent visit to Alaska, when you ignored requests to meet with State and tribal leaders, yet continue to meet with representatives of the very groups trying to eliminate resource production in Alaska.

Unsurprisingly, as you know, and perhaps in coordination with your team at BLM, on June 12, 2024, a coalition of far-left environmental groups petitioned DOI and BLM to take the following actions:

1. Immediately initiate scoping for supplemental environmental review of the TAPS;
2. Complete an SEIS for TAPS with “meaningful” alternatives and mitigation measures; and,
3. Draft a plan for the dismantlement and removal of TAPS, and the restoration of the right of way.

Their request is a significant undertaking, as in 2020, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) concluded that, on average, it takes 4.5 years for an agency to complete an environmental impact statement, compared to an EA, which takes a much shorter period of time.

It is now time for DOI and BLM to prove their worth, and whether they are truly working in the public interest, or merely pandering to the Lower-48 radical environmental elite. DOI is required to respond to the petition, “within a reasonable time…[and] proceed to conclude a matter presented to it.” So, if DOI and BLM choose to move forward with the environmentalists’ petition, it will confirm my suspicions that DOI and BLM’s plates are, in fact, not “full” and that leadership decisions regarding “workload with the Department” are intended to cater to their far-left allies, given an SEIS for TAPs will take a significantly longer period of time than an EA for PLO 5150.

With that in mind, I request that BLM provide to my office not later than September 13, 2024 the following records:

1. Communications with Third Parties: All records reflecting communications (including emails and email attachments, text messages, Teams chats, iMessages or any other communication app messages, telephone call logs, calendar entries, meeting agendas, meeting notes or memoranda, faxes, or any other physical or electronic records reflecting communications, including those that have been deleted or in draft form but are recoverable) that “officials within the United States Department of the Interior exchanged” with any person who is not an employee of the U.S. Federal Government regarding: (i) Public Land Order 5150; (ii) the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; or (iii) the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan. Please search from January 1, 2021 through the date of the search.
2. Decision Documents: All records reflecting communications (including emails and email attachments, text messages, Teams chats, iMessages or any other communication app messages, telephone call logs, calendar entries, meeting agendas, meeting notes or memoranda, faxes, or any other physical or electronic records reflecting communications, including those that have been deleted or in draft form but are recoverable) between officers or employees of the federal government (between or internal to any department or agency), which concern, reflect, relate to, or include:
   A. Any determination, discussion, or identification of deficiencies within the “Central Yukon Draft Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement, Alaska,” published by the Bureau of Land Management on December 11, 2020, including those determinations, discussions, or identifications of deficiencies regarding Alternative E, which recommended lifting PLO 5150;
   B. Any determination, discussion, or identification of the ground on which the decision was made to recommend retention of PLO 5150 in the “Central Yukon
   Proposed Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement, Alaska,” published by the Bureau of Land Management on April 19, 2024; and
   C. Any determination, discussion, or identification of the grounds on which to approve or deny the petition filed with Secretary Haaland by the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on June 12, 2024 requesting “a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System & Plan for dismantlement, Removal, and Restoration.” …
3. Personal Emails and Texts: Personal emails and texts sent by the following list of employees from January 20, 2021 through the date of the search:
   A. All communications, including any attachments, sent to or from any nongovernmental email address or phone number established, controlled, or used by any of the following employees.
   B. All records referring or relating to the use of any nongovernmental email address or phone number established, controlled, or used by any of the following employees.
   C. All communications, including any attachments, made or received in connection with the transaction of government business using any nongovernmental email account or nongovernmental communications device established, controlled, or used by the following employees….
   
4. Calendars: All calendars or calendar entries for the following individuals, including any calendars maintained on behalf of these individuals (e.g., by an administrative assistant) from January 20, 2021 through the date of the search: …

I request that the calendars be produced in a format that includes all invitees, any notes, and all attachments. Please do not limit your search to Outlook calendars alone. Please produce any responsive document be it paper or electronic, available on a government-issued or personal device used to track or coordinate the time the individual allocates to agency business.