Senate votes to vacate Biden rule on Alaska petroleum reserve

David Jordan, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 30, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday passed a joint resolution that would vacate a Biden-era Bureau of Land Management rule covering portions of northern Alaska.

The joint resolution passed 52-45, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democrat joining Republicans. Introduced by Alaska Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, it would use the Congressional Review Act to vacate a 2022 BLM record of decision covering the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which borders the Arctic Ocean.

Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, has introduced a companion bill in the House. The state’s congressional delegation has argued that many of the rules finalized during the Biden administration unfairly targeted the state, preventing it from developing oil, natural gas and critical mineral deposits, particularly in struggling Alaska Native communities.

“What the Biden administration did when they came into office is they took the NPR-A . . . and they said we are going to essentially shut this down,” Sullivan said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

The joint resolution not only would prevent the enforcement of the 2022 record of decision, it also would prevent a future administration from finalizing anything that is substantially the same.

Republicans recently used a similar method to vacate three BLM resource management plans concerning eastern Montana, North Dakota and the central Yukon in Alaska.

In 2022, the Biden administration finalized a record of decision that would close off 11 million acres to oil and gas leasing. In making this move, the BLM had determined a 2020 record of decision finalized during the first Trump administration was inconsistent with Biden climate policy and did not adequately protect the environment.

This 2022 record of decision was used to justify a rule, finalized in 2024, that codified protections for more than 13 million acres in “special areas,” which the Biden administration said would conserve resources and support subsistence uses for native communities.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to “unleash” Alaskan energy production, which included a requirement that the Interior Department pause “all activities and privileges” authorized under the 2022 record of decision, reinstate the 2020 record of decision and work to rescind the 2024 final rule.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has taken additional actions to implement this order, including issuing a proposed rulemaking to rescind the 2024 final rule.

The CRA typically allows Congress to review and disapprove of rules for a period of 60 legislative days following a rules finalization, but the NPR-A record of decision was not initially submitted to Congress as a rule. The Government Accountability Office said in July that the record of decision was a rule for the purposes of the CRA, which Republicans used as an opportunity to restart the clock.

The BLM’s Alaska State Office has started the process for leasing land in the NPR-A for oil and gas development, which the agency says would be the first lease sale for the reserve since 2019. The July reconciliation law reinstated the NPR-A leasing program and requires six lease sales be conducted over the next 10 years.

The reconciliation law also reinstated oil and gas leasing on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and BLM announced last week it was opening the entire 1.56 million acres of the Coastal Plain to be available for development. Along the same lines as the NPR-A measure, Murkowski and Sullivan have introduced a joint resolution that would nullify a record of decision covering ANWR’s Coastal Plain.