Thread by @djhayes01

1/ The Trump push to sell oil & gas leases in the #ArcticNationalWildlifeRefuge before Jan 20 is nuts for a zillion reasons. Check out this thread for a few.

2/ The Arctic Nat'l Wildlife Refuge is one of America's most treasured landscapes. Leases will be offered on the most biologically sensitive part of the Refuge, where migratory birds nest & porcupine caribou give birth after completing the longest migration of any mammal on earth

3/ The EIS prepared by @Interior for oil & gas drilling in the Refuge is woefully inadequate. It gives short shrift to climate-related issues, despite the Arctic's rapid warming. Env'tal harms associated with major aspects of oil & gas activity (like seismic testing) were ignored

4/ Also, because no seismic testing has occurred (to avoid addressing env'tal harms & slowing down a rushed leasing process), oil companies will be bidding blindly on tracts for which no pertinent information is available.

5/ Nonetheless @Interior yesterday formally called for nominations regarding tracts that it is considering for sale. Comments are due by Dec 17 (regs require 30 days). @Interior then would normally evaluate which whether/which tracts might be offered for sale.

6/ But for @Interior to hold a sale before the Jan 20 inauguration, it must issue a notice of sale at least 30 days (key BLM memo says 45 days) before the sale & after consideration of the Dec 17 comments - meaning that there would be no time to consider comments & change course.

7/ So will Interior make a mockery of the process, ignore objections filed on Dec 17, post a notice of sale on Dec 18/19, and try to hold a lease sale on Jan 18/19 -- a day or two before President-elect Biden takes office? I don't put it past them to try.

8/ Such trampling on required legal process would be vintage Trump & his enablers. Politics & ideology win over the law, environmental values & economics. (Drilling in expensive, reputation-threatening frontier fields makes no sense to responsible oil cos or their financiers.)

9/ If @Interior persists in trying to cram through a lease sale in the Arctic Refuge at the 11th hour, legal protests, law suits, and injunction requests will follow. I suppose that would be a fitting, if inglorious, end to this admin's stewardship of America's treasures.