in effect
This is Executive Order 14153, signed January 20, 2025, and published in the Federal Register on January 29, 2025. It is a presidential directive ordering federal agencies to expand development of Alaska’s natural resources — energy, minerals, timber, and seafood. It sets a policy of maximizing resource production on both federal and state land in Alaska and speeding up permits and leases.
The order tells agencies to undo a long list of specific Biden-era actions (issued between January 20, 2021 and January 20, 2025) that limited resource development. Concretely, the Interior Secretary is directed to: reverse the halt on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) coastal-plain oil-and-gas leasing program, reinstate the 2019–2020 environmental reviews and leasing decisions, and reinstate the cancelled ANWR leases; place review “moratoriums” on newer records of decision for the Ambler Road project, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska plan, and the 2023 Alaska roadless rule (each to be re-examined for “alleged legal deficiencies”); rescind the 2024 National Petroleum Reserve protection rule; and prioritize permitting for the Alaska LNG Project pipeline and export infrastructure. It also directs faster work on the King Cove–Cold Bay road, a review of navigable waterways to potentially return them to state ownership, denial of a pending request to establish an indigenous sacred site in ANWR’s coastal plain, and a report to the President on Alaska energy export capacity including the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. No specific dollar amounts or fixed deadlines are set; most steps are ordered to happen “immediately” or “as soon as practicable.”
Federal agencies — chiefly Interior, Agriculture (Forest Service), Commerce, and the Army Corps of Engineers — must carry out these reviews and reversals. Oil, gas, mining, timber, and LNG developers in Alaska, along with the State of Alaska government, are the intended beneficiaries. Alaska Native corporations, subsistence hunters and fishers, and users of the affected refuges, reserves, and forests are named in the order and would be touched by the land-management changes. The order states it creates no legal rights enforceable against the government and must be carried out consistent with existing law and available funding.