TAPS Attack: Biden Administration vs. Alaska

 “With this action,” Murkowski added: 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.

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.

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).

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.

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

https://www.masterresource.org/trans-alaska-pipeline/taps-attack-biden/