WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today released the following statement on the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to hold an oil and natural gas lease sale next month in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve:

“I wish I could applaud the administration for planning another lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Unfortunately, this sale – like the previous one – is simply a diversion.

“The president likes to say he supports production, but his actions tell a different story. In Alaska, where the federal government controls more than 60 percent of the land, there is zero oil and gas production from federally managed lands. And under his leadership, fully half of the 23.5-million-acre NPR-A is off limits. The results of the last lease sale in NPR-A predictably raised little interest – and for good reason.

“The truth is that another lease sale is meaningless if the administration continues to refuse to allow development to move forward. Alaskans have seen nothing but excuses and delays at Greater Moose’s Tooth and CD-5. If companies cannot build roads and bridges to access their acreage, then leases are worthless. The administration knows this.

“The NPR-A is also just one area of Alaska with oil and gas potential – and not even the most promising one. If the president truly wants to claim he supports oil and gas production on federal areas, he needs to stop blocking development in Alaska’s offshore and the Arctic coastal plain.

“Words are cheap and Alaskans are tired of empty promises.”

Murkowski is the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee, the authorizing and appropriating committees with jurisdiction over the Interior Department. 

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