Trump administration says “drill, baby, drill!” to oil giant’s Beaufort Sea proposal

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has green-lighted a proposal from Italian oil company Eni for exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea. That makes Eni the first company since 2015 to receive permission to look for oil in the federal waters off Alaska, and it could begin work as soon as December. “Drilling for oil in the Arctic is an accident waiting to happen,” Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in response. “The Trump administration is risking a major oil spill by letting this foreign corporation drill in the unforgiving waters off Alaska.” Meanwhile, a battle is raging in Congress over a provision in the GOP-led tax reform bill that would open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling in order to raise $1 billion (which it wouldn’t) to ostensibly pay for significant tax cuts ($1.5 trillion) for the wealthiest Americans (real nice).