The decision, which halts the potential to drill for oil in over 1 million acres in the Cook Inlet in Alaska.
In a statement shared first with CBS News, the Department of the Interior cited a “lack of industry interest in leasing in the area” for the decision to “not move forward” with the Cook Inlet lease sale.
The department also halted two leases under consideration for the Gulf of Mexico region because of “conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has previously canceled lease sales in Cook Inlet three times — in 2007, 2008, and 2011 — also citing “lack of industry interest” at the time as the reason for scrapping the sales.
Federal law requires the Department of the Interior to stick to a five-year leasing plan for auctioning offshore leases. The administration had until the end of the current five-year plan — set to expire at the end of next month — to complete these lease sales.
Until now, the White House had remained silent about the massive Alaska lease. However, canceling the sale would be in keeping with political promises President Joe Biden made in the name of halting global warming. But those promises have become a political challenge in the face of prices at the pump.
“They don’t want to get hit by the Republicans in light of the high gas prices,” one environmental advocate told CBS News, speaking on the condition he not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. “They’re getting killed on attacks based on inflation. The most visible sign of inflation is high gas prices.”
The delicate political situation was evident after a top environmental official showed her hand in an email that copied a CBS News reporter. Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, wrote that “the Cook inlet sale was canceled. It is not proceeding.”
Almost immediately, another White House official jumped in to declare that McCarthy got ahead of herself. Interior Department officials said a final decision had not been made. On Wednesday, though, with time running out, the department made its announcement.
Political | Process 
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