Gov. Mike Dunleavy and several top officials from his administration on Wednesday celebrated new executive orders issued by President Donald Trump that remove restrictions on resource extraction in Alaska.

Trump’s return to the White House means a promise for oil drilling in the Arctic, logging in Southeast Alaska and mining and other resource extraction around the state, the governor and his administration’s officials said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“From my perspective, this is ‘Happy Days are Here Again,’ to be honest with you,” Dunleavy said. “This is like wrapping a gigantic sled of Christmas presents for the state of Alaska.”

While Dunleavy and other officials heaped praise on Trump, whom the governor called a “force of nature in the White House,” they heaped scorn on former President Joe Biden and his administration.

“Jan. 20 really marked the cessation of the Biden administration’s war against Alaska. So It’s wonderful to be here basking in the light of morning in America, as we actually have a federal government that instead of treating us like a fief, is going to treat us as equal partners,” said John Boyle, commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. “And actually work to promote jobs and investment and opportunities in the state, versus lobbing one inimical policy after another in their quixotic quest, I guess, to turn Alaska into an open-air museum.”

Similar scorn was expressed about environmentalists. “That we don’t have these wine-and-cheese-eating environmentalists in Seattle or San Francisco or some other terrible city that wants to impose their agenda on us is a good thing,” Boyle said.

Randy Ruaro, executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, predicted a flurry of oil activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain.

New lease sales authorized by Trump will likely have a better industry response than did the lease sales held in 2021, where AIDEA was the main bidder, and earlier this month, in which there were no bidders, Ruaro said.

AIDEA, a state-owned development corporation, had the leases it bought in 2021 “illegally cancelled and stopped,” he said. Those leases could hold 3 billion to 4 billion barrels of oil, and Trump’s executive order reinstates them, he said.

As for the lack of response to the last lease sale, he blamed the Biden administration’s environmental conditions. “Terms and conditions were just too onerous. You couldn’t develop under those terms,” he said.

Boyle said there will also be more development in the National Petroleum Reserve, on the western side of the North Slope.

Trump reversing Biden policies, including recent policy calls made by the administration, “as they kind of slithered out the door, is going to be particularly important for us” to increase energy development and production, Boyle said.

Boyle conceded that the Biden administration had approved the giant Willow oil project being developed by ConocoPhillips in the reserve. But that administration put too many conditions on the development, hurdles that are now removed, he said. The mineral resources that provide the oil to be developed at Willow extends farther across the reserve, he said. “There’s going to be multiple Willows that are available to develop in the NPR-A.”

The Ambler Access Project being sponsored by AIDEA is another development project that has new life in the Trump administration. The project, which AIDEA proposes to fund, would put a road stretching about 200 miles into the Brooks Range foothills to provide access to an isolated mining district dominated by copper reserves.

The Biden administration “illegally stopped” AIDEA’s right to continue that project, Ruaro said. “We look forward to, probably the end of March, reengaging with a number of entities engaging in that project,” Ruaro said, listing some supportive tribal governments. “We’re all happy that we’re going to get a chance to move ahead and build some projects that’ll help Alaskans.”

The project is controversial. Though embraced by Alaska politicians and the mining industry, it is opposed by a coalition of tribal governments, environmentalists, sport hunters, some Native corporations and some budget hawks who do not want state money spent on it. The Biden administration in June officially rejected the project as proposed by AIDEA.

Boyle hailed the Trump order rescinding protections for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest, saying it will allow logging to resume in the largest U.S. national forest.

“The federal government has done everything that they could under the Biden administration and before that, under the Obama administration and so on, to stop any kind of timber harvest in the Tongass National Forest. In my mind, this was the grossest mismanagement of a federal asset that I can imagine.” Boyle said.

Some other policies for which Trump has reversed Biden administration positions concern hunting in national park units, state control over waterways and the way fish are harvested in them, and broad land-management plans, the officials said.

Not included in Trump’s actions is anything that would restart development of the Pebble mine, the controversial copper project in the Bristol Bay region that was stopped through action by the Biden administration Environmental Protection Agency. But Dunleavy, who supports Pebble’s development, said he plans to raise that issue with Trump.

Legal challenges expected

Both Dunleavy and Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor predicted legal challenges to the new Trump policies.

“There’s going to be a lot of forces and a lot of lawyers making a lot of money trying to stop some of these things that the president wants,” Dunleavy said.

“If this were a military engagement, Alaska just received very capable and powerful reinforcement of fresh troops. But the battle will still rage on,” Taylor said.

Environmental groups are already gearing up for legal fights.

In a statement issued Monday, the environmental law firm Earthjustice listed ways that some of the Trump executive actions affect its Alaska clients, who include tribal members and fishers and hunters.

“The Trump administration’s agenda for Alaska would destroy valuable habitats and subsistence hunting and fishing grounds while furthering the climate crisis. Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few,” Carole Holley, Earthjustice’s managing attorney in Alaska, said in the statement.

At the news conference, Dunleavy demurred when asked about some of Trump’s actions.

He declined to take a public position on Trump stripping the Denali name from North America’s tallest peak, reverting to the Mount McKinley name.

Denali has been the state’s official name for the peak for half a century.

He will probably travel back to Washington in February, and then he will “be able to have the discussion about the mountain, what the mountain means to Alaskans and Americans, what the mountain means in terms of its name Denali to our Native folks, and just have that conversation with him,” he said.

“Until I have the conversation, I’m going to refrain from saying what it should be or shouldn’t be. But right now, the name is Denali,” he said.

Dunleavy said he did not know enough about Trump’s action halting federal support of wind energy projects, both offshore and onshore, to comment. Wind energy is important in Alaska, particularly in isolated rural areas.

“We’re all digesting what’s just occurred. I will have to see if that’s impacting all wind projects. That would be tough on places like Texas and Iowa, which produce a tremendous amount of wind, if it’s all wind projects,” he said. Alaska currently does not have offshore wind energy projects.

He also declined to comment on Trump’s order that seeks to halt spending under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Both pieces of legislation have funneled large amounts of money to Alaska for projects like water and sewer service in rural areas, where some communities lack piped water, and broadband access. As of early 2024, the infrastructure law had provided $7.2 billion to the state, according to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.