American president Donald Trump wants to grant early permits for oil drilling in a remote nature reserve in the state of Alaska before Joe Biden is sworn in as the new president of the United States. That’s what sources say to Bloomberg News Agency. Biden has said that he will not allow drilling in that area.
It is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska. Trump would now like to speed up the deployment of a permit route for oil companies. Environmental groups are strongly opposed to drilling because local nature and animal life, such as polar bears, would be endangered by oil pollution, for example. Biden said that drilling in the Nature Reserve would be a “big disaster”.
According to estimates by the US government, extractable oil stocks in the nature reserve range between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels (159 litres). It remains to be seen whether oil companies really want to work in that area, because there is hardly any infrastructure and oil prices are low, which can make extraction unprofitable. It is also possible to count on strong public resistance to the drilling.
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