The Department of the Interior adopted a style best described as delusional triumphalism when it announced the results of its latest auction of drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The auction of oil leases on environmentally sensitive land on Alaska’s northern coastal plain was, in Interior’s telling, “another important step toward restoring American Energy Dominance,” creating jobs and generating “significant revenue” for Alaska and the US as a whole. The real tell was its insistence that the lease sale “underscores the vision that both industry and government share about the viability of development” in ANWR.
Industry shared in that vision largely ...