Trump Mulls Incidental Polar Bear Kills in Alaska Oil Region (2)

The Trump administration is granting the Alaska oil industry’s request to update regulations that could allow the unintentional harassment and killing of polar bears and walruses by drillers off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, according to a notice published Friday.

Some walruses may die because oil companies’ airplane noise may cause them to stampede, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said in the Federal Register public inspection notice.

FWS is proposing a rule that would permit Beaufort Sea oil and gas operations resulting in “incidental take,” the term the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act use for the unintentional harassment or killing of protected animals. Polar Bears are protected under both laws, but walruses are protected only under the MMPA. The proposal is open to public comment for 30 days.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Association, representing Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc., and 15 other oil and gas companies, requested new regulations that would permit the incidental take of walruses and polar bears in the Beaufort Sea for a five year period through 2031. FWS said in the notice it’s granting AOGA’s request and is also requesting public comment on which specific types of incidental take the agency can allow.

Steve Wackowski, AOGA CEO, said the association is still reviewing the rule, but incidental take regulations are routine.

The companies don’t anticipate killing any polar bears, and FWS expects oil and gas operations to have a “negligible” impact on the bears and walruses, affecting only “small numbers of animals,” the notice said.

But the notice says FWS is considering whether the “best reading” of the MMPA includes allowing “all types” of incidental take even though the likelihood of polar bear killings is low.

When asked what “all types” of incidental take includes, FWS said in an unsigned email that “no lethal take of polar bears or Pacific walrus is anticipated for the proposed activities.”

“The existing dataset contains no definitive evidence that an industry activity caused a maternal den abandonment that in turn resulted in cub mortality,” FWS said in its email.

AOGA said the regulations are important to support the oil industry and lethal take is evaluated as part of the regulatory process.

“AOGA did not request authorization for lethal take of polar bears or walruses, and we do not expect it would ever be necessary,” Wackowski said.

The Trump administration’s proposal is another in a series of moves it has made to provide the oil and gas industry with greater access to Alaska’s North Slope and adjacent waters. It opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing and drilling along with the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and other areas in the region while dropping the Biden administration’s measures to protect sensitive wildlife habitat there.

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, said the rule would harm polar bears already at risk from climate change.

“Allowing this much harassment from drillers is too risky for Arctic marine mammals, especially if drilling off Alaska expands as much as Trump is pushing for,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Previous Rule Upheld

The Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations also issued incidental take regulations for drillers in the area, none of which allowed polar bears and walruses to be killed.

Environmental groups challenged the Biden administration’s rule to permit polar bear harassment in the Beaufort Sea, saying oil drilling will cause irreparable harm to the species. But the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the rule in 2024, saying vacatur would “in essence criminalize” oil operations in the Beaufort Sea.

It’s extremely rare for a polar bear to be killed by oil and gas industry activities, and “we do not anticipate” future killings, FWS said in the notice. But the bears die from human activity sometimes when it forces polar bear mothers to abandon cubs in their dens.

Walruses can die when they’re struck by a boat, or “trampled by other walruses in a human-caused stampede,” often caused by noise from low-flying airplanes, the FWS notice says.

The Trump administration first allowed the level of harassment resulting in walrus stampedes in a revisions of the Biden administration’s rules published in June.

AOGA members and non-members requesting the revised regulations include Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., BlueCrest Energy, Inc., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc., ExxonMobile Alaska Production, Inc., Finnex, Furie Operating Alaska LLC, Glacier Oil and Gas Corp., Hilcorp Alaska LLC, Hilcorp North Slope LLC, Marathon Petroleum Corp., Petro Star Inc., Repsol, Santos, Shell Exploration and Production Co., APA Corp., and 8 Star Alaska LLC.