The Trump administration on Thursday finalised plans to open the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to potential oil and gas drilling, renewing a long-simmering debate over whether to drill in one of the nation’s environmental jewels.
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the decision Thursday that paves the way for future lease sales within the refuge’s 631,309-hectare coastal plain, an area that's considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in.
